


In a Different Light

by ohlookanotherwriter



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Complete, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 23,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2020905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohlookanotherwriter/pseuds/ohlookanotherwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This girl looked as if she ate nails for breakfast and people for lunch, decked out in all black with the exception of the logo of some rock band on her shirt, those monstrosities in her ears about the size of nickels that surely left huge, unflattering gapes in the cartilage when taken out, and a look on her face that could make a grown man cower in fear. Modern AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Heavy footsteps, something jingling, and a little bit of whistling. 

Those are the things that interrupted Mrs. Allen’s relatively quiet third period bio class that Thursday afternoon. The noises got closer and closer until they sounded as if they were a few feet from the door, and then stopped. Anna was one of the only students who kept their noses in their book when the owner of the noises entered the classroom. She continued taking notes on the periodic table as Mrs. Allen introduced the new girl to the class, not taking any interest in this Elsa girl.

It was only when the noises picked up again for a few seconds, then stopped near Anna did the red haired girl finally look up to take in her surroundings. Towering over her was the new student. This girl looked as if she ate nails for breakfast and people for lunch, decked out in all black with the exception of the logo of some rock band on her shirt, those monstrosities in her ears about the size of nickels that surely left huge, unflattering gapes in the cartilage when taken out, and a look on her face that could make a grown man cower in fear. Anna herself was slightly frightened by the creature, but tried her hardest not to let it show too much. 

The girl twirled a set of keys in her hands and gave Anna a little smirk. ″Can I sit here?″ She asked, gesturing towards the empty seat at her table. Anna nodded, watching the girl as she set her book bag on the ground and descended into the chair with a certain air of elegance which quickly depleted when she pushed the chair back and propped her feet on the black tabletop. Elsa twirled the keys in her hand once more before she leaned over to put them in her bag. She took out her phone started messing around on it. Anna, setting her pencil down in slight frustration, glared at the girl until she got her attention. 

″You’re not really supposed to do that.″ She informed the new girl who obviously didn’t know the rules.

Elsa cocked her head the girl as if she had never been told what was acceptable and not acceptable before. She threw up her hands in mock defeat and made a production of putting her feet back on the ground. Pretending to clean off any scuff marks she might have made on the table with her shoes, she said ″Sorry ma’am, didn’t realize getting comfortable was against the law nowadays.″

″Excuse you,″ Anna retorted ″It’s common sense that you’re not supposed to do things like that in a classroom. It’s not professional.″

Elsa scoffed and slid Anna’s text book away from her and in front of herself. Grabbing a pen and a notebook from her bag, she looked as if she was going to start taking notes on the text in front of her, much to Anna’s surprise. Instead, she started doodling some nonsense in the textbook, in her notebook, on the table, etc. At one point she attempted to make some markings on Anna herself. She was able to manage a one-eyed angry face before the frustrated girl snatched her hand away and grabbed the textbook back from the new girl that was quickly getting on her nerves. 

″Okay, we’re getting off on the wrong foot here.″ Elsa said, glancing over at the teacher to make sure she wasn’t paying any attention to the two of them. She stuck her hand out towards the redhead. ″Hello, my name is Elsa and I would very much like to finish the beautiful piece of artwork I was putting together on your hand which you obviously not very appreciative of. That was very rude, by the way. You never disrupt an artist at work.″

Anna, even though she was annoyed by this Elsa character, accidentally let out a little laugh. 

″Aw you see, I’m a good person, I knew you’d like me. ″

Anna rolled her eyes and went back to looking at her text book and taking more notes. Naturally, she was the first one to finish up for the day. She closed the book and put her finished notes into a folder and put it in her bag. She leaned back in her chair, watching the clock as it ticked and tocked. There was still about twenty minutes left of class before lunch and she had nothing to do. Apparently neither did Elsa because all she did for the remaining twenty minutes was poke Anna, trying to start a conversation, even though Mrs. Allen shushed her several times. Every now and then Elsa would say something funny that would make Anna giggle. Hearing that soft noise that would come out of her whenever she did filled Elsa with a wave of pride that could only be refueled once she was able to do it again. Though after being hushed about five or six more times by the biology teacher, she finally took the hint and settled into her chair, almost mirroring the way Anna was sitting.

The punk girl periodically glanced over at Anna, taking her in. She looked her up and down, Anna trying to pretend like she wasn’t noticing it. She watched as the smaller girl licked her thumb and started rubbing at the drawing on the opposite hand in hopes that it would disappear, knowing well that it wouldn’t. Elsa smirked when she groaned at the one-eyed angry face that only turned into a dark smudge when she tried to make it go away. 

When the bell finally rang for lunch, Anna hurried out of the classroom as fast as she could, hoping not to get caught up in Elsa. But, to Anna’s surprise, Elsa actually made it out of the room before she had. The taller girl hadn’t even glanced at the girl she had been pestering the entire period, she just left. She wasn’t exactly sure why she was so offended by it, but she was.


	2. Chapter 2

Over the course of about a week and a half, Elsa had grown on Anna almost completely. Elsa quickly learned how to get Anna to calm down and not get so wound up over little things like having someone draw on her hand. Anna learned how to deal with Elsa’s antics and how to get her back on track when she somehow managed to distract herself. To her, though, it was like training a puppy that thought it was okay to pee on the new furniture and chew up everything it saw.

“We’re not even using the Bunsen burners, how were able to hurt yourself!?” Anna hissed, escorting the taller girl to the sink and turning the knob to let cool water pour over the injury. Elsa flinched when the water made contact with her burn but Anna forced her to keep her hand under the sink. The two girls had been working on a lab, using the microscopes to investigate onion cells, when Elsa started messing with the knobs on one of the Bunsen burners and burned herself on the flame it produced.

“It was an accident!” Elsa said. All she got in return was a glare and a scoff from the redhead.

″Maybe if you were doing your work like you were supposed to, this accident could have been avoided.”

“Well excuse the hell out of me, sorry for waiting for you to be done using the microscope instead of pestering you. I was bored!” Anna turned the sink off and went back to their lab station with Elsa trailing behind her. A mean looking group of girls that had been working on the lab together looked towards the pair and snickered, earning themselves a threatening glare from Elsa. 

Elsa had learned in her first few days at the school that Anna wasn’t well liked by most students with the exception of one boy that she had yet to meet but had seen in the hallway a few times talking to Anna. He was a tall, blonde boy that was pretty muscly and kind of goofy looking. Apparently, this boy was Anna’s only friend and was very protective of her and would tear up anyone who tried to mess with her. She hadn’t asked her about it yet, but Elsa was pretty sure that the two were dating. Or at least it was rumored that they were. 

“Don’t mess with anything except for this.” Anna warned when they arrived back at their station and gave Elsa the microscope. The platinum haired girl gave her a little smile and took the instrument, looking into it. Every few minutes, she would look up from it and answered the questions on the worksheet that was given to them at the beginning of class. When she was done, she took her and Anna’s papers and brought them to the turn in bin with a few minutes left to spare until the lunch bell rang. When it finally did, Elsa noticed the group of girl’s that had laughed at the two of them earlier were whispering and glancing at Anna as they were putting their stuff in their bags. She didn’t know why, but Elsa felt anger explode in her every time they looked in their direction. Even though she knew she could easily, ahem, take care of those girls, she refrained from doing so in fear of getting Anna’s disapproving look the way she had when she burned herself on the flame. 

“Hey, Anna,” Elsa said as the girl started to walk away from her, about to pass the group of girls. For a second after Anna made eye contact with her, Elsa’s mouth hung open. She didn’t know why she had called the girls name, it was just an impulse. “Um, uh… will you go with me to get ice? I don’t know where the nurse’s office is.” Nice save, genius.

“Sure.” She shrugged and waited for Elsa to catch up with her.   
\----  
Elsa sat in the cafeteria, holding a plastic bag of ice to her hand. Anna sat across the table from her, eating an apple and reading a book. “Aren’t you going to get something to eat?” she asked the girl that kept looking at her hand as if waiting for the burn to magically go away. 

″Oh, no, I'm not hungry right now.″ Elsa and Anna usually didn’t sit together at lunch; they both usually sat by themselves. “Your friend, um—“

“Kristoff.” She filled in, looking up from the book that she had been so engrossed in. Her face showed some sort of distress at the mention of the boy. Elsa couldn’t be completely sure, but she had a feeling that the relationship between the two could be one of those complicated ones that Elsa never cared for. She chuckled at the thought of this innocent redhead being in a complicated relationship with the boy. 

“Yeah, him, he doesn’t have this lunch?” 

“No,” she said and put a bookmark in her book, saving her page. “He’s in the lunch period just before this one.”

Elsa nodded to acknowledge what she had said. Anna could feel the awkward tension start to rise between the two of them. She was never very good at this whole socializing thing and she didn’t know what to do when the conversation ran dry like this. Even Elsa, who was usually ready with witty quips to throw around, seemed to have nothing to say at the moment. 

“So how ‘bout them onion cells, eh?” Anna finally mustered. Elsa gave her a look that let her know she had taken the conversation in the wrong direction. ″Okay wow, that was stupid, let me try again. Um… how did you do on that test Friday?”

“Well first, I think that it was bullshit that I had to take a test on my second day of school, that was extremely uncalled for. Second, I did pretty damn good considering the fact that your handwriting is really hard to read. I got a ninety two.”

“Oh, that’s go- wait, were you cheating off of me!?” Anna’s eyes got wide as if cheating on a test was the worst sin in the world. “Elsa, that’s horrible, you’re never going to learn anything that way!”

“Don’t worry, Snowflake, it won’t happen again.” She took the ice off of her hand and tossed it in the trash can a few feet away from them. It wasn’t doing her any good, anyway. “Hey, maybe you could help make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning maybe you could help me get caught up on some of these things and help me figure out where we are right now.”

“I honestly doubt that you care about this class that much.” Anna said with a smirk.

“Are you planning on adding a ‘no offense’ in there somewhere?” Elsa said, smiling at the girl that was finally warming up to her enough to insult her without fearing getting hit. “Well, anyway, I was thinking maybe you would be interested in coming to my place after school to study or something?”

“Depends. There won’t be any drugs, right?”

“Miss Anna,” Elsa scoffed and put a hand to her chest. “I am absolutely offended that you think I would have drugs at my home. I'm reckless, but not that reckless. Shame on you for thinking I am.”

When the end of lunch bell rang, Elsa gave Anna her information and told her when a good time to come by would be. The two girls then gathered their belonging and went their separate ways.


	3. Chapter 3

“I just don’t think you should go, to be honest.” The tall blonde boy said as he watched the redhead shove notes from the previous weeks into her bag. He was laying on her bed, spreading out and messing up her sheets the way he knows she hates and constantly letting out unnecessarily loud yawns. 

“Can you not make a mess for once?” It was more of a demand than a question. ″And why not? She’s not as bad as I thought she was going to be. She can actually be pretty nice.″ She paused for a second with a stack of notes about chlorophyll in her hand and added ″When she’s not too busy being rude or obnoxious, I mean.″

″Because I've seen her in the hallways and I just don’t like the way she looks.″ Anna shot him a glare, letting him know that he needed to reword what he had just said. ″You know what I mean. She just looks like the type of person that gets in trouble a lot and I don’t want you getting mixed up in that. Besides, she just screams ‘DRUG ADDICT’ and ‘I’VE BEEN TO JAIL FIVE TIMES’ from every angle, and don’t tell me you don’t think so too because I know you do. She’s probably in that group of kids that goes out back during lunch and smokes an entire pack of cigs.″ He rattled off one assumption about Elsa after the next, getting the famous Anna Disapproves look with every other one. ″And you know what, she probably lives in some rundown, dangerous building in the middle of gang territory with seven brothers and sisters running around causing all sorts of mayhem. She probably actually had more than seven, but a few of them were caught up in gang fights and got killed!″

″Kristoff, that’s not funny! And last time I checked,″ Anna said and looked at the piece of paper with Elsa’s address and phone number on it. ″Arendelle Apartments isn’t exactly in the middle of ‘gang territory.’ Sure, it’s not exactly the nicest apartment building in town, but it’s hardly rundown.″  
″Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.″ Kristoff grunted, earning himself a balled up piece of paper to the face.   
\--------------------------  
″Olaf, come on! Get your crap off the table; she’s going to be here in…″ Elsa frantically checked her phone for the time ″In twenty minutes! Hurry up!″ Elsa’s little brother came stumbling out of his room, almost tripping over a laundry basket of his newly cleaned clothes set in front of his door. ″And I told you to put those away forever ago.″ She barked at the five-year-old. 

The apartment was a wreck and they only had a short amount of time left before Anna was supposed to arrive to help with school work. Elsa, not typically prone to caring about the cleanliness of their home when visitors were to come over, was for once in her life hellbent on making sure that her apartment looked presentable. They haven’t lived in it very long, yet it somehow managed to look like a tornado had touched down right there. Boxes still filled with stuff from the move were scattered all over the place, furniture was placed at weird angles due to the fact that they haven’t figured out how they want it set up yet, and, most importantly, Olaf’s coloring books were still all over the kitchen table.   
″I’m getting them, I’m getting them!″ The boy said when he noticed his older sister eyeing them. She smiled and gave him an approving nod when they were finally cleared from the table and put away in his room. When he saw it, he gave her a big smile and tackled her with a hug. ″I like warm hugs!″  
\-----------------------------  
″Okay, we’re almost there, I’m giving you one more chance to change your mind. I can turn this car right around if you want. You know, just do a U-turn right here, in the middle of the road. I can go right over that medium if need be.″ 

″Shut up! You're making such a big deal out of this; it’s not that big of a deal!″ The two sat in silence while Anna took her phone out to text Elsa and tell her she was almost there. ″I'm just helping her with some school work… just like getting caught up and stuff; it’s the nice thing to do. She’s new and needs to know where we are in the curriculum.″

″As if she actually cares.″ Kristoff muttered to himself. He got another Anna Disapproves look and kept his mouth shut for the rest of the drive. 

″Besides… I think she could become a really good friend.″ 

Kristoff really did not like this Elsa girl. He was afraid that Elsa was just another one of those girls that would trick Anna into thinking she was her friend just to make fun of her. It’s happened before and the poor girl is so naïve, it will probably happen again. Kristoff hates admitting it, but Anna is such a nerdy, awkward girl, this punk rock ho Elsa would never actually want to be friends with her. There’s just too much of a contradiction in the idea of that friendship. There’s too much that wouldn’t go right. There would be too many fights for that friendship to work out. Sure, he and Anna fight a lot, but it’s more playful than anything else. No one would actually ever have a serious fight over who got the last juice box in the fridge. And even that was never really a fight because everyone knows it always goes to the owner of the refrigerator.   
\------------------------------  
″Shit, shit, SHIT!″ Elsa hissed when her phone vibrated with a text from Anna saying she was almost there. 

″Hey!″ Olaf shouted from his bedroom door in a whiny voice. ″You need to put a dime in the swear jar!″

Elsa muttered a promise that she would later, but right now she had to finish getting all the boxes out of the living room, dining room, and kitchen. There wasn’t a lot of space to put anything with the apartment being very tiny, but she tried her best to at least shove the contents of the boxes in some place or another and get rid of the boxes.

When there was a knock on the door, a nervous panic fled through Elsa’s heart. Olaf raced to the door and pulled it open, revealing the red haired girl standing outside the doorway. 

″Hi! I’m Olaf and I like warm hugs!″ His tiny arms wrapped themselves around the girl’s waist, making her stumble backwards a little bit. For a moment she looked shocked, but that quickly went away as she hugged the little boy in return. 

″Hi, I’m Anna and I also like warm hugs.″ Elsa smiled at the interaction between the two. She let it go on for a few more seconds before she approached Anna and greeted her. 

″Sorry for the mess, we kind of got lazy unpacking things.″

Anna looked around the room, seeing only a few half unpacked boxes littered around it. ″It’s not that bad. If you want, I could help you finish unpacking before we start with the school work.″


	4. Chapter 4

“So where are your parents? Work?”

The siblings stopped what they had been doing when the words left her mouth. Olaf was moving some stuff into his room and Elsa was rummaging through a box of old photos of the two of them and hanging them up on the wall. They glanced at each other then at the girl. Anna suddenly got struck with the feeling that she had said something horribly wrong to the two of them. Olaf dropped the box of story books he was carrying and darted for his room, whimpering silently as he was plagued with bad memories. ″Our parents are baddies!″ The boy shouted, his voice obviously muffled by either blankets or pillows. Anna stood with her mouth agape and looked over to the taller girl. Elsa put down the photo she had figuring out where to hang to go over and gather the scattered books her brother had dropped. Her platinum hair fell over her shoulders, covering her reddened gauged ears, as she shook her head in what Anna thought seemed to be anger. 

Or maybe… had it been pain? 

“Is… is it a touchy subject?” Icy blue eyes met Anna’s, making her take a step back in fear of the threatening girl lunging at her. She didn’t doubt that Elsa could easily beat her up if she wanted to. Thoughts of what Kristoff had been saying to her as he drove her to the apartment ran whipped around in her head.

Elsa took the box and placed it next to her little brother’s door so he could get it when he was ready to come back out of his room. “It’s not really something we like talking about.” There was a quiver in her voice that nearly broke Anna’s heart. “We don’t live with them anymore. It’s really complicated and, honestly, it’s not information that’s ready to be disclosed to someone I’ve just met.” There was a long pause while she fiddled with some rags in a box on the couch before she spoke again. “I'm sorry about him; it’s a really sensitive subject… for both of us.”

Anna saw something she had yet to see in the girl since they had met. She was fragile. This was the girl who, on her second day of school, shoved one of the football players she had seen picking on Anna to the ground and kicked him in his soft spot. This was the girl that shouted at the school librarian for shushing her when she was trying to have a conversation. This was the girl who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind in class, no matter how much trouble it would undoubtedly get her in. In her eyes, Anna saw that the girl’s fire had been extinguished by weakness. 

″I'm sorry.″ Anna muttered ″I swear, if I knew that it was a sensitive subject, I wouldn’t have brou—.″

″No, it’s fine.” Elsa held up a hand to stop the redhead from speaking anymore. “Uh… maybe we should start on that school stuff. Me and Olaf can get the rest of this stuff unpacked some other time.″  
\--------------------------  
“I told you going over there was a bad idea.” Kristoff scoffed when Anna finished telling him about what had happened. “The girl’s bad news, Anna. She’s keeping secrets from you and that’s never a good thing.”

“Stop, Kristoff.” Anna huffed. “Elsa’s not ‘keeping secrets’ from me, she’s refraining from telling someone she hasn’t even known for two full weeks about a personal part of her life. That’s completely understandable.”

“What if her parents are like psychos and that’s in Elsa’s genes? What are you going to do then? What if she like attacks you or something? She could kill you, Anna, no man I’m not driving you over there anymore, no way.” Anna slapped the boy in his chest, giving him another disapproving glare. “Okay, okay how did the studying part go at least?”

“I would hardly call what we were doing ‘studying.’” Kristoff took his gaze off the road for a second and quirked an eyebrow at the girl “I mean, like, she kept getting distracted with some stuff in boxes that were in grabbing range. She was listening to what I was saying, but only barely. Which is a shame because I was telling her all about Charles Darwin and I feel like she’d have been really interested in it if she had given me her full attention.” She fiddled around with zippers on her bag. “I’m sure she got most of it, though.”  
\----------------------------  
“Elsa…” Olaf’s voice whined from the other side of her door. “Elsa, can I come in?”

Part of Elsa wanted to tell her little brother to go away the way she usually would have, but she thought against it. She got up from her bed and crossed the room, opening the door enough to let the boy in. 

“I like your friend.” He said, clambering up on Elsa’s bed and jumping up and down, obviously feeling better from earlier. “Can she come over more often? Ooh are you going to date her? I like her. I like her better than the last girl. The last one was mean to you. Anna’s a nice lady, that other lady wasn’t. I like Anna. Can Anna come over more often?” The words left his mouth at a rapid rate.

“Woah, woah, woah.” Elsa caught Olaf mid-jump and sat him down on the edge of the bed. She went to sit down next to him. “No, Olaf, I don’t think I’m going to start dating Anna. I don’t think that there’s a chance of that happening.” A small frown bled onto the little boy’s face. “She can, however, come over more often. If she wants to, that is. I’m not going to force her to.”

Olaf got up and cheered, resuming jumping up and down on the bed. Elsa smiled at her little brother’s gleefulness. He seemed to have completely forgotten about the little slip up earlier, which wouldn’t have been a shock to Elsa. The boy always seemed to be in a good mood all the time, no matter what happened. Even the day they had moved out of their parent’s house for good, she could see the boy smiling in the rearview mirror as they drove away to their new home a few towns over. 

″I think you should date.″ The boy yawned his words as he finally settled down and crawled up into Elsa’s bed. ″I’m sleeping in here tonight.″


	5. Chapter 5

_“Elsa!″ The drunken voice of her father shouted from just down the hall. ″Come here, sweetie, I want to have a little talk with you!″ There was a loud thud and the sound of ceramic smattering. ″Come on, I won’t hurt you, I promise!″ Elsa knew better than to believe that particular promise. Olaf tugged on the older girl’s t-shirt and whimpered as tears streamed down his face. She hastily shoved her brother into the closet, hoping he knew to stay quiet so that their dad wouldn’t hear him._

_″Your mother is blowing the dealer again, can you just fucking_ believe _that?″ His voice was coming closer and closer quickly. There was a loud banging on her bedroom door followed by the slow turning of the knob. Elsa’s heart stopped at the recognition of what was going to happen next. Her father stumbled into her room, falling facedown onto the ground, grumbling angrily. Elsa backed into the farthest corner of her room, knowing that it would be no use. The intoxicated man picked himself up off the floor and made his way to his daughter. ″It was okay last time because we owed him money, but NOW she’s just doing it for the hell of it.″ He cupped the girl’s cheek, released it, and drew his hand back. She felt the calloused palm of his hand make contact with her face, causing her to lose her balance and fall. He grabbed her by her upper arm, forced her to her feet, and did it again._

_And again._

_And again._

_The fourth time he grabbed her, he yanked at her hair and brought her face close to his own. She could smell the alcohol on his breath as he muttered some incoherent words to her. Something about a family of sluts. Like mother, like daughter._

_The only thing on Elsa’s mind at the moment was Olaf. She hoped and prayed that the boy would stay concealed in the closet and not do anything to let her father know he was there. She could only imagine what her father would do to him if he found out he wasn’t in his bed, asleep, like he was supposed to be at this time of night. The man tightened his grip on the Elsa’s arm and tossed her onto the bed. He watched her struggle to get away as he undid his belt. Every time she got her feet on the ground and stood up, he shoved back down with more force each time._

_″You look so much like your mother, you know that?″_

* * *

Elsa awoke from the nightmare in a cold sweat. She checked the time.

6:30 AM

She had an hour to get Olaf to school and two before she herself had to be at school. She put her head in her hands and tried not to think of her dream. Looking over to Olaf to make sure he was still there, she let out a deep sigh of relief and woke him up.

″Come on, buddy, time to get ready for school.″ She said and shook him awake. He rolled out of the bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and made an attempt to convince his sister to let him sleep for just five more minutes. ″No, go get in the shower, I’ll start putting together your breakfast. How does Lucky Charms sound?″

″Yeah!″ He cheered and raced to go to the bathroom and take a shower.

Elsa chuckled and got herself out of bed to go prepare breakfast as she promised. The memories that had plagued her dream came to her at full force, making the smile that had occupied her face go away. She cringed with each image that flew through her head. Pulling herself together, she grabbed the almost empty box of cereal from the cabinet and got milk from the refrigerator. About twenty minutes later, Olaf arrived at the table, washed and fully clothed, but his hair was a mess. Elsa went to her room and grabbed a brush. She stopped at the door before exiting.  Looking around, she noticed how much the setup of her room now resembled how she had it set up at her parent’s house. She decided that she wouldn’t go to school and spend the day rearranging the room and finish the rest of the unpacking.

* * *

Anna looked at herself in the mirror, making sure her hair was decent enough for school. There was a knock on her door followed by her mom’s voice, telling her that Kristoff was there to pick her up. She grabbed her bag and raced to the front door, not wanting to be late for school.

″Hey there, feisty pants.″ Kristoff greeted her as she entered the car. Anna returned the greeting and tossed her bag into the backseat. ″Hey, do you wanna text you’re girlfriend and see if she needs a ride to school too? Always glad to get people to their desired destinations.″ Kristoff got the Anna Disapproves look and continued with, ″Kidding! I’m just kidding! Get a sense of humor, Anna.”

″Oh, but you have enough of a sense of humor for the both of us.” The redhead teased.

The ride to school was filled with Kristoff’s horrible taste in music and Anna repeatedly asking him to change the station. “Driver chooses the station. Get yourself your own car and drive _me_ around and you can pick the music.″ He argued every time, to which Anna always weakly retorted with “Or you could just let me drive.″ Kristoff always threw his head back and laughed whenever she made that suggestion.

″Or you could ride the bus. There’s always that option.″

* * *

Elsa started with the box of pictures and photo albums she was working on the night before. Her fingers danced across an overturned wooden frame. Turning it over, a picture a twelve-year-old Elsa holding her newborn brother was revealed. Her mother was in a hospital bed and her father was grasping Elsa’s shoulder firmly while he smiled at the camera. She remembered that day vividly. She was so excited to have a baby brother, she couldn’t hold back the stupid grin on her young face. Everyone in the picture looked so happy. There was no sign on anyone’s face that just two short years after that picture had been taken would their lives start to fall apart. Her father would start drinking and her mother would get consumed in drugs, soon dragging her husband down with her.

Anger started to redden Elsa’s face. She was mad at her parents for doing this to them. She was mad at her dad for hurting her and her brother and she was mad at her mom for being too scared to do anything about it and for abandoning her family, getting lost in her addiction. She was mad that she and Olaf didn’t have memories of a happy family and a good childhood like most people did.

Without realizing what she had been doing, she threw the picture against the wall with a loud scream of frustration that tore through the previously silent room. The force of her throw caused the frame to break, glass to shatter, and left a dent in the wall where it had made contact. Rushing into the kitchen, Elsa rummaged through the drawers for a pair of scissors and made her way to the mess. She brushed the glass and splintered wood away and retrieved the picture of the seemingly happy family. She went to work on it and when she was done, she was holding just a picture of her and her newborn baby brother.

* * *

“Hey, why weren’t you in school today?” Anna spoke into the phone while she waited for Kristoff to meet her in the front of the school like they always did.

″Eh, wasn’t really feeling it.″ Anna made a note to ignore the wateriness in Elsa’s voice, showing obvious signs that she had been crying. She was sure that if she was in front of Elsa at that very moment, her face would have been tear stained with more coming; she would have been right too. ″So Olaf really likes you.″

A smile graced Anna’s lips. ″Oh does he? I’m glad to get the Olaf Seal of Approval.″

″Don’t flatter yourself, he likes everyone.″ Elsa quipped. ″This morning, he deemed the worm outside our apartment building his best friend. Apparently it’s my best friend too now.”

“Oh no, that’s adorable. And I’m sure the worm is honored to be your best friend.”

“No way, I’m the one who’s honored.” Anna bit her lip and stifled a giggle. “Anyway, he says he wants you to come over more often.”

″Is that so? And what about you?”

“Nah son, I want you to be as far away from you as possible at all times. It’s bad enough that I have to be in a class with such a kissass.” Anna would have been offended if Elsa wasn’t obviously hiding a chuckle as she was saying it.

“Excuse you, I do not ‘kiss ass.’” she defended herself. Kristoff rounded the corner and waved when he saw Anna. As he approached her, he made a motion to tickle her, but Anna swatted his hands away and held up a finger indicating to give her a minute. A look of disappointment appeared on the boy’s face to which Anna only responded with a pat on his cheek and a smirk.

“ _Excuse you_ , yes you do. ‘Mrs. Allen, the answer is smart talk, smart talk, smart talk.’ ‘Mrs. Allen, you look lovely today.’ ‘Mrs. Allen is there anything I can do for extra credit.’” Elsa mocked in a high pitched voice that Anna assumed was supposed to be her own. “Damn, I wouldn’t be shocked if the lady has lipstick smudges all over her wrinkly ass.”

Kristoff motioned for Anna to follow him out the front door. When they got to his car, she put her bag in the back seat and sat down in the front. “Hey, do you want me to come over again today? Or, excuse me, does _Olaf_ want me to come over today?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think he might like that.” Elsa said coyly.

“Okay then, I’ll be over around the same time. See you then.” Another smile danced across her face as she hung up and looked over to Kristoff, who was giving her a somewhat annoyed look.

“Am I driving you over to that girl’s house again?”


	6. Chapter 6

″What happened over there?″ Anna asked, gesturing towards the dent in the wall as Elsa let her in the small apartment. Little bits of glass and splintered wood were still stuck in the carpet. Elsa had picked up most of the debris earlier but she had yet to go over the area with a vacuum. She has actually yet to even buy a vacuum.

″Just a little incident with one of the pictures. I tripped and the thing just went flying out of my hand. I’m such a klutz, I know.″ Anna chose to believe what she had told her. She figured it must have had something to do with the sadness that she had heard in Elsa’s voice earlier on the phone and if Elsa wanted to talk about it, she would. ″Did I miss anything uberly important today?″

″Only Mrs. Allen going off on us about how only two people passed that test on Friday.″

″Oh sweet, we were the only two who passed?″

″Well _technically_ I was the only one who passed since you decided it would be easier to just cheat off of me.″ Anna gave the platinum haired girl a playful glare and plopped down on the couch next to her. She was about to say something else when a knock on the door interrupted her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elsa flinch at the sound of fist making contact with wood. A frightened look crossed her face, but only for a moment. She stood up and crossed the room to answer the door. She knew it couldn’t be Olaf because he should still have been over at a new friend’s house and she hadn’t been expecting anyone besides Anna. Tentatively, she opened the door to reveal a muscular blonde boy holding a bright green book bag. Elsa recognized him to be Anna’s friend, Kristoff, who didn’t seem to be too happy to see her.

“Anna forgot her bag in my car.” He said in an unamused tone with a deadpan expression on his face.

“Yes, hi, my name is Elsa. Nice to meet you too, sir.” She quipped and went to grab the bag from the boy, only to have him pull it away from her. He glared down at the girl, putting off obvious signals that he did not like her. _Okay bro, I never did anything to you, lay the fuck off._ “Would you like to come in?”

“Why are you wearing all black, it’s hot out and you look like you’re going to a funeral.” He stated, ignoring her invitation. Elsa looked down at what she was wearing. She had on a black tank top with a white skull on it and black skinny jeans. It was a typical outfit for her and it didn’t seem as odd to her as it did to Kristoff.

“Sorry?” Elsa said, furrowing her brow in annoyance.

“Kristoff! Stop being rude.” Anna finally interjected. She walked up and stood behind Elsa, putting a hand on her shoulder. The taller girl jumped out of shock at the contact and Anna snatched her hand away from where it had been. She muttered an apology to her and grabbed the bag from Kristoff. As she made her way back to the couch, Kristoff brushed passed Elsa, bumping his shoulder hard against hers, and followed his friend. _Well excuse the hell out of me._

“By the way, you’re mom called me- I don’t know why she couldn’t call you- and told me to remind you that you need to be home by eight.” When Anna gave him a questioning look, Kristoff added “Potluck, remember? Your mom wants your help making stuff for this weekend. And she wants to know if your _new best friend_ wants to come.”

“Oh right! I completely forgot about that! Damn, I’m really not looking forward to it.” Elsa was visibly shocked at the sound of Anna swearing , making the smaller girl blush at the look on her face. “Elsa, would you like to come? Olaf can come too, if he wants.”

“What’s a potluck?” Kristoff mockingly laughed at the girl, earning a punch from Anna. _Ooh take that, dumbass._

“It’s like a huge neighborhood party we have every month. Everyone brings food and hangs out and kids play together and stuff. It’s really fun! You should come; it’s at my house this weekend.”

A memory flashed through Elsa’s mind. It was a few months after Olaf had been born and her parents were throwing a huge party for no reason, really. It was one of the few decent memories she had of her parents, for the most part at least. The party that night was great, that she remembered, but there was a blur near the end of the night that Elsa could never really remember correctly. One of the few things she was sure of was that her mother had been drinking a lot that night. The two of them were in the kitchen alone and she had been helping her bring some food out to the living room for the guests. Elsa was handling a particularly heave platter of vegetables and ranch dressing. This is where things start to get hazy for her. She remembered hearing the clattering of the platter to the ground and she remembered her mother slurring disapproving words at her and she kind of remembered her head making contact with a wooden cabinet, but that’s about it.

Elsa didn’t realize she had been staring into space until Anna’s fingers snapped in front of her face. “Right, sorry.” She muttered. “Um… I don’t know, I really shouldn’t. Parties aren’t exactly my element.” She ignored Kristoff when he whispered something along the lines of “Of course they aren’t.” but she did shoot him a glare, resembling the one he had given her earlier.  “I’ll think about it though. I’ll ask Olaf what he thinks later.”

* * *

“Elsa’s the girl that Kristoff has been teasing you about lately, correct?” Anna nodded at her mom and rolled another meatball. Her face reddened at the thought of Kristoff's assumptions about the two girls. Anna never thought about girls that way. Though, she’s never really thought about boys that way either. The only relationship she had ever been in was, regretfully, when she had dated Kristoff for a short period of time when they were fourteen. They had been friends since they were little kids and everyone had picked on them about how they always acted like a couple, so they decided to give it a try. It barely lasted a month before Anna realized that they’re relationship should go back to being just friends. “Do you like her?”

Anna was shocked at the words that left her mom’s mouth. “I-uh… I don’t… I don’t think so? I mean, I don’t- I wouldn’t…” she blundered, losing her grip on the meatball and heard it splat to the ground. “No, I definitely do not. Absolutely not. N-not at all.”

Her mom wiped her hands on her apron and placed them on her daughter’s shoulders warmly. “Anna, it’s okay if you do. Your father and I will love you no matter what and no matter who you decide to fall in love with. You’re still our daughter and nothing will ever change that. We’ll always support you.” She gave Anna a small smile and turned back to the kitchen counter where a tray of uncooked meatballs had been waiting. She picked up the tray and placed it in the already preheated oven. “Now, let’s try that again… do you like this Elsa girl?”

* * *

Elsa couldn’t stop staring at the redhead. She looked absolutely amazing. Whenever Elsa had seen her at school, Anna was always in jeans and a t-shirt or a button down or something, but today she was wearing a light blue sundress with pink flowers scattered around it. The dress fit her just right, accentuating the perfect features of her body.

“Elsa?” The girl asked, looking at her expectantly. She had been talking, but Elsa had been distracted. Gawking, actually, would have been a better word for it. “Would you like to come in?” She repeated. “The party’s actually _in there.”_

“Right, right, yeah.” Olaf had already raced into the house and found his way to the backyard where the other kids were. “Um, I brought macaroni salad.” She said and handed Anna the Tupperware. “But, uh… to be honest, I just… I just bought that from the store and put it in a container so _shh.”_ She admitted and held a finger to her lips. Anna giggled and led her into the house. Elsa followed her until they ended up in the kitchen where a middle-aged woman who resembled Anna almost exactly was taking paper plates out of their plastic wrap.

“Hey mom, this is Elsa.” The lady turned around to face the two of them and smiled, even though she was a little shocked at the girl’s appearance. She never expected her innocent daughter to befriend someone who seemed so… rough. Regardless, she walked over and took Elsa’s hand in her own and shook it.

“Hello, Elsa, I’m Eleanor. It’s nice to meet you, I’ve heard wonderful things!” Wrinkles formed at the edges of the lady’s smile.

“Oh, so you talk about me?” She gave Anna a glance and smiled. “I see how it is.” Anna blushed furiously, wishing she were able to hide her face without making the redness obvious. “It’s nice to meet you too, Eleanor. I, honestly, have not heard many things about you.″

Out of the corner of her eye, Elsa spotted a platter of vegetables and ranch dressing. Once again, the memory of her parent’s party flooded back into her head. This time, though, she shoved the thought away. She was determined to have a good time and not let any old memories ruin her day.

In the backyard, kids were playing, adults were chattering, and teenagers were gossiping. Kristoff was with Anna’s dad by the grill, drinking soda and talking about some hockey game that had been on the other night. He glanced over at the two girls as they exited the house and sat down in plastic lawn chairs, making sure to give Elsa a glare. Elsa noticed it, but decided to do nothing about it. Just like she wouldn’t let bad memories ruin her day, she also wouldn’t let Kristoff ruin her day. Looking around, she spotted Olaf kicking around a soccer ball with a few other kids, but the game was interrupted when a large St. Bernard stole the ball from them.

“That’s Kristoff’s dog, Sven.” Anna pointed at the large dog that was trying to fit the soccer ball into its mouth.  “He’s kind of oafish. A perfect match for Kris, really.” Elsa didn’t even try to hold back her laugh. They watched as the kids chased the dog around, trying to get the ball back from him. Soon, they gave up and went off to play with a frisbee that the dog also got a hold of in no time.

Anna giggled as she watched the kids once again chase the dog around. Elsa would have paid attention to them if she hadn’t been lost in the sound of Anna’s laugh. When she realized she had been staring again, she quickly averted her gaze to the grilling area, only to see that Kristoff had been staring at her. He didn’t stop when Elsa had met his gaze, either. _What are you looking at, punk?_ Once again, she tore her eyes away angrily and finally placed them on her little brother, who was laughing and trying to tug the frisbee out of the dog’s mouth. The kids around him cheered when he finally got the disk away from the dog and fell flat on his back. Elsa made a move to get up to go and make sure he was okay, but stopped when she felt a soft hand meet her forearm. She flinched, slightly gasping at the contact and looked to her left, seeing that Anna was the one who was holding her back. She sat back down, keeping her eye contact with Anna.

“Are you having fun being ‘out of your element’ yet?” She asked. Elsa nodded, smiling and looked back over to make sure her little brother was okay.

“Yeah, thanks for inviting me.”

“No pr—“

“Hey, girls!” Kristoff's booming voice made Elsa jump. The boy was walking towards the two of them, waving a large hand in the air. “Elsa, good to see you.” He gave the girl the fakest smile she had ever seen and turned his head to look at Anna, who was too busy looking at the kids to notice him. She lifted a hand and gave him a little wave, letting him know that she was, in fact, aware of his presence. He pulled up another lawn chair and placed it right in front of the two of them, partially blocking Elsa’s view of her little brother. “What are you thinking, Els? Like the party?” Elsa got the feeling that Anna had a talk with Kristoff about being nicer to her and to stop acting like such a dick.

“Yes, we were actually just talking about that.”

Kristoff was about to say something else when Anna’s dad called her over. She stood up and flattened her dress out. She said some parting words before going over to help her dad set out some of the food he had cooked. Kristoff watched her walk away until she was out of earshot. He turned back around and shot daggers at Elsa. “Okay, so you and I need to talk.”

“I’m all ears, buddy.” Elsa leaned forward, put her elbow on her knees, and placed her head in her hands. “Go ahead.”

“I swear to god, Elsa, if any of this is just a ploy to make fun of Anna or do anything to hurt her, I will make it a priority to hurt _you._ We both know Anna’s book smart, but she’s not people smart. She can’t tell when someone is just using her.” Kristoff’s words were laced with venom. Elsa hadn’t had any idea that he thought she was out to hurt Anna, and she was genuinely shocked that he did.

“Kristoff, is this why you hate me so much?”  Elsa’s face dropped. “I promise, I don’t have any intentions of doing anything bad to Anna. I know you may think I’m such a horrible person, but I swear, I'm not. Believe it or not, I can actually be a pretty decent person.” Kristoff didn’t seem to be believing anything she was saying. “I promise.” She said again.

“Just remember what I said.” He stood up from the lawn chair and walked over to the kids and his dog and joined them.

* * *

“Okay, okay no, I  _refuse_ to believe that this was actually a thing.” Elsa was laughing hysterically at a photo of Anna and Kristoff when they were about eight. It was Halloween and the pair was dressed up like Belle and Beast from Beauty and the Beast. She was laughing more at Kristoff with what looked like someone’s armpit hair taped to his face than Anna, who looked adorable in her yellow dress. She put the frame back on Anna’s nightstand and looked out the window that overlooked the backyard, checking on Olaf for the thousandth time. The two girls had gotten bored outside and Anna had suggested that they go up to her room. Unsurprisingly, Anna’s bedroom was a bright,  _bright_ orange. There were photos her and Kristoff and her and her family all over the room.

“It was. It was actually a thing and it was a thing again the year after that. And I will neither confirm nor deny that it happened again for one more year after _that._ ”

“Kristoff looked like he had pubes on his face.” Anna laughed at the comment and playfully hit Elsa’s arm. Elsa looked around the girl’s room and saw an old yearbook on the wooden dresser a few feet away from her. She went over to pick it up, but Anna was faster.

“No!” She grabbed the book and held it close to her chest. “You are most definitely not going to see my freshman year picture!”

“Well now I have to.” Elsa went to grab the book from her. Anna turned so that her back faced her and shoved the book in a drawer. Elsa wrapped an arm around the girl and reached for the drawer she had put it in, but Anna put her weight against it, giggling. “Oh, come on! I promise I won’t laugh!”

“You said that about the Halloween picture!”

“Well I mean it this time.” Elsa placed a hand on Anna’s cheek and moved her face so that she could look into her eyes and gave her her best pouty face. Anna sighed and pulled away from the dresser, pulling the yearbook out of the drawer and finding her picture in it. She let out another sigh, turned her head away, and thrust the book towards Elsa. A scrawny looking, red haired girl with a big smile and braces and glasses that were too big for her face met Elsa’s gaze. She tried her best to live up to her promise, but a small chuckle managed its way out of her mouth. Anna whipped her head around and glared at the girl. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I broke my promise and I am deeply sorry.” Anna’s glare softened and turned into a little smile. “You actually look really cute, Anna.″

A small blush covered her cheeks. ″Really?″ She turned around so that her body was facing Elsa again. It was then that she realized how close they were. There were only a few inches between the two girls that only a single step could close.

″Really.″ Elsa looked down at the girl and smiled. ″Though, I’ll admit, you look way cuter now than you did then.″   


	7. Chapter 7

Elsa took a small step closer to Anna, closing the space between the two of them. She placed her hands on Anna’s hips, swearing that she could’ve heard Anna’s breath hitch and get shallower. Still smiling, she lowered her head ever so slightly so that she could feel the tickle of the smaller girl’s breath on her face. She moved closer until their noses were almost touching. Anna opened her mouth a little bit and—

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

″Hey Anna, your mom’s looking for you!″ Kristoff’s annoying voice came from the other side of the closed door. Anna stumbled backwards, not paying attention to her surroundings and bumped hard into the dresser. She stumbled and tried to get her balance before she fell over, but Elsa saved her from an embarrassing fall. She grabbed Anna by her shoulders and straightened her up.

″S-sorry. My mom, she uh… my mom needs me for… um, something. Yeah, I should probably go down there. _We-_ we should probably go down there. I won’t leave you in my room alone, that’s weird.″ Anna’s eyes widened at the word vomit coming from her mouth. Elsa offered a shy laugh. ″Not that you being in my room is _weird!_ Just that it’d be weird if I were to leave a guest in here while I went to go do something somewhere else. Wow, I’m using the word ‘guest’ as if I don’t know you; I definitely know you. _Wow_ I am talking a lot.″ Anna walked towards the door, stumbling over a pile of books on the floor. Elsa just watched with her face starting to redden as the girl turned the knob and left the room, walking passed a grinning Kristoff. She followed her out the door and downstairs to the kitchen.  _Way to go, genius, you probably just freaked her out to the max. Just try hiding your homo next time._

″Hey sweetie, can you help me carry some of this stuff out.″ Eleanor asked her daughter, gesturing towards a few platters of food on the table. ″Elsa, dear, if you could just grab that one, that’d be great. Thank you!″ Elsa looked at what she had been pointing at. She grabbed the plate and followed Anna out to the backyard where tables of food were set up.

″I’m sorry about that. About getting all gay on you in there.″ Elsa piped up sheepishly when she set the plate down. She jumped when Anna’s hand placed itself on her arm and turned her body to face her’s.

″It’s fine.″ She said, pulling her hand away, noting how obviously uncomfortable Elsa gets whenever someone touches her. ″To be honest, I, uh… I—‘

″Hey Anna, you left this one.″ Elsa shot Kristoff a glare as he walked up with the extra food that had been left behind. When he put it down, he threw his hands in the air. ″Whoa, am I interrupting something here.″

 _You look stupid._ Elsa looked up and down at the boy who had taken his shirt off from earlier. _It’s most definitely not hot enough to not have a shirt on, moron._

″No, Kristoff, you’re fine.″ Anna replied and broke her eye contact with Elsa, whose face was reddening even worse than it was before. Elsa wanted to butt in and tell Kristoff to fuck off, but she thought against it. The conversation she was having with Anna was already lost.

* * *

″I guess I’ll see you Monday.″ Elsa told her friend as they walked out to her car. Elsa was carrying a pooped Olaf in her arms. Anna opened the door for her to set the boy down and watched as she leaned over to put her brother in the car and buckle him up. If you asked her, she would deny the fact that she was staring at Elsa’s behind.

″Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Unless…” She trailed off. Elsa stood back up straight and looked into eye’s bright blue eyes, quirking an eyebrow. ″Unless maybe you want to do something tomorrow? Just us, no party, or neighbors, or little kids, or dogs, or Kristoff. If you want, I’m sure my mom would be okay with watching Olaf, she really likes him.” Anna looked at the ground and whispered “She really liked you too.”

“Well I’m glad _someone’s_ parents like me.” Elsa muttered under her breath.

“What?”

“What?” Her head shot up. “I mean, yeah, sure I’d love to do something tomorrow. Anything you want.” She smiled and nodded. “I’ll come here around…”

“Twelve is fine. Or earlier. Or later.”

“Twelve. Twelve is okay. Yeah, I’ll be here around twelve. Are you sure your mom is alright with watching Olaf? Ii not, I can just find a baby sitter or something, I’m getting paid this week, it’s not a problem.” Anna reassured her that Eleanor would love to watch over her little brother.

Elsa leaned against her car, her eyes following Anna as she went to stand directly in front of her. She looked her up and down as her tongue absentmindedly darted out and went over her lower lip. She found herself begging for Anna to close the little bit of space left between the two of them. But with her luck, Kristoff would probably clump after them with some excuse to break them apart again. _What an oaf._

 Anna took a shaky step forward and tilted her head upwards. Once again, Elsa felt the smaller girl’s breath on her face. Elsa was so close- they were so _close-_ when Anna turned her head away. “I’ll see you later…” she breathed. She walked away, hiding her face from Elsa as she made her way to her front door. ″Bye!″ she shouted as she disappeared into her house. Elsa stood, stunned, with the feeling of Anna’s warm breath still lingering on her face. She threw her head back, looking up at the darkening sky, closed her eyes and let out a loud groan. Moments later, she heard the front door creak open again and rushed footsteps making their way towards her. Before she had the chance to open her eyes, she felt warm lips press against her cheek. They were there for only a second before they pulled away, followed by the sound of the footsteps retreating. Elsa had her eyes squeezed shut, only to open them when she heard the front door slam shut again.

* * *

Anna cringed at her previous actions. She couldn’t believe she actually did that, she knew she was going to have to explain herself when she saw Elsa next. ″Mom!″ she called out in desperation. Her mom’s muffled response came from the kitchen.  

″I saw.″ she said when her daughter walked into the room. She was washing dishes and nodded towards the window in front of the sink, looking over the front yard. ″You could have been a little bit smoother. Also, when you left, she was smiling, so don’t be too paranoid about it. I think she likes you.″ Anna let out a sigh of relief and thanked her mom. ″Did her and her brother have fun?″

″Yeah! Yeah, um, actually do you think maybe you could watch Olaf tomorrow? He’s a sweet boy, really, and you said you enjoyed him yourself. And he likes warm hugs!″

″Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll be happy to watch him while you two go on a _date.″_ She kissed her daughter’s hair as she left the kitchen. Anna’s face reddened. She stomped after her mom.

″Not a date!″ She called out.

* * *

“See, I told you you and Anna should start dating!” Olaf said from the backseat as the two drove away from the house. “I told you! She’s  _sooo_ much better than the other one!”

″Okay, Carly was not _that_ bad.” Elsa scoffed and looked at her brother in the rearview mirror. He was beaming and squirming in his seat. “She just wasn’t the best girlfriend in the world.”

“I didn’t like the way she treated you.” Olaf grumbled, crossing his arms. ″She was a meanie.”

“I know, you’ve told me a billion times.” Carly was a pretty girl. Slim, short, blonde, nice body, knew what she was doing. When they had first met, Elsa was attracted more to her body and what she could do with it than to her personality.

Elsa found out soon after they had started dating that Carly was bossy and uptight, but not uptight in the way that Anna was uptight. Anna can joke around and let loose and actually have fun when she’s not in school. Carly, on the other hand, had issues with just about everything and everyone, including Elsa. She could never take one of Elsa’s jokes and Elsa couldn’t count the amount of times Carly had threatened to break up with her for no real reason. It was when she told her that she was going to try getting her and Olaf emancipated from her parents. That was the last straw for Elsa. Carly had gone off on a rampage about how “Kids in Africa have it worse than you, Elsa!” “At least you have parents, Elsa, some people don’t have that privilege!” She had known full well what Elsa and Olaf had been going through with their parents and she didn’t support her decision at all. Granted, Elsa never told Carly about what happened that night with her father. The night that she constantly has horrible dreams about. She’s never told anyone about it, actually. She’s never told anyone about the multiple times that it had happened afterwards, either.


	8. Chapter 8

″Hey there.″ Anna smiled and let Elsa and Olaf into her house. ″Olaf, my mom is in the backyard if you want to go out there with her.″ The little boy raced to the backyard, leaving the two girls alone in an awkward silence. Anna, again, was wearing a dark blue sundress that Elsa thought looked absolutely beautiful on her. Elsa felt shown up as she was just wearing jeans and a Blink-182 t-shirt. To be fair, though, she didn’t know what to wear for they had not made very specific plans; Anna just said they were going to hang out.

“Hey.” Elsa finally greeted and offered a small smile. “So what were you planning on doing today?”

“Uh… do you want to go and get poster board stuff to work on that assignment Mrs. Allen gave us on Friday?” For the assignment, they were to get a partner and make a display on a virus or disease of their choice. Elsa and Anna were going to do theirs on leprosy. Elsa, of course, was not interested in doing any school work. “We haven’t even started on it yet.”

“Ugh can we refrain from starting on it, though?” Elsa dropped her arms to her sides and twisted back and forth, looking like a child about to throw a tantrum. Anna gave her a stern look, letting her know that she wasn’t going to get her way with this. “Can we get coffee first at least? We- when I say we, I obviously mean you- can do like research and stuff there and then we can do all the typing and stuff. And _then_ poster board stuff.”

“Okay, fine. But you have to promise me you will actually do _something_ on this project. I don’t know how things were at your old school, but at this school, group work requires everyone in the group to do something.” Anna went upstairs, grabbed her laptop from her room, and shouted a goodbye to her parents. Elsa found Olaf and warned him to behave for Eleanor and they were on their way. Anna’s mom caught her on the way out the door and whispered into her ear “Working on a project? You’re horrible at planning dates.” Anna slapped her mom’s arm and closed the front door on her.

Elsa went to open the car door for Anna, getting a thank you in return, and slamming it shut when the girl was completely in her seat. She went around to the other side, got in and started the car up, waiting for directions from Anna to the nearest Starbucks.

“So can I ask you something?” Anna piped up halfway through the ride, glancing over at Elsa, who had her eyes set on the road. She nodded. Anna took a deep breath before continuing. Elsa expected her to bring up the day before when two times they almost kissed and the one time they kind of did. But, to her surprise, she didn’t. “Remember when I came over to your house the first time and I said something that kind of set you and your brother off? And then you said that you weren’t ready to talk about it to me because you didn’t really feel that close to me? I'm sorry, it’s just that it’s been on my mind a lot and I was just wond—”

“It’s fine.” Elsa said, pushing the brake pedal when the light in front of them turned yellow then red. “I guess I feel like I can talk to you about it…” The light turned green and she pushed down on the gas. “It’s simple, really. Our parents weren’t the best people in the world and I decided to get emancipated. It was relatively easy, considering the legal aspect of it, but it was getting custody of Olaf that was the difficult part. It’s a rarity that an underaged sibling gets custody, but I proved myself able to take care of both me and him, so the court allowed it.” Anna knew that wasn’t the whole story, but she wouldn’t push it. She didn’t have to push it. “Our parents were both pretty caught up in drugs and drinking and all that shit, they were constantly in trouble with people, and, well… they were…″ Anna though that Elsa was close to crying, but she held herself together. ″They were kind of really abusive… They, uh… they did things. Luckily, though, I was able to keep them away from Olaf, for the most part.” Anna’s jaw dropped. She was about to say something when the Starbucks came into sight. “We’re here.” Elsa turned into the parking lot and found a space.

Avoiding going any deeper into the conversation, Elsa darted out of the car and went around to open the door for Anna again. Clutching her laptop close to her chest, she stepped out of the car and followed the taller girl into the coffee shop. She decided she wouldn’t bring up anything about Elsa’s past again unless Elsa wanted to. She was obviously uncomfortable talking about it and Anna didn’t want to do anything to push her away. When they got into the store, they placed their order and found a table to sit at. Anna opened up her laptop as Elsa pulled a chair around to sit next to her.

“Do you think it got on guys’ dicks?” Elsa asked as she propped her feet up on the table.

“What?” Anna asked, eyes widening in shock. She shooed Elsa’s feet off the table, earning a groan from her and another display of setting her feet back on the floor much like her first day at the school.

“The leprosy.” Elsa stated. “Do you think it spread to guys dicks? Ew imagine how uncomfortable th—“

“I don’t want to think about that, honestly.”

“Imagine _Kristoff_ with leprosy, oh my god!” Elsa clapped her hands together and started laughing at the thought of Anna’s friend with such an unfortunate virus. One of the baristas called their name. Anna shot up and got the coffee, leaving a laughing Elsa behind at the table. She thanked the man and slipped a dollar bill in the tip jar. Elsa was still going on about what she said, chuckling, when Anna arrived back at the table with their coffee and sat back down.

“You’re a child.” Anna handed Elsa her coffee, shaking her head, and logged into the Starbucks Wi-Fi. Opening a word document, she typed up a heading and got to work doing research on the old leprosy virus. Every few minutes, Elsa would make an attempt to be helpful and point to a link that she thought looked like it could be useful.

“You look pretty today, by the way.” Elsa said, twirling her thumbs together and looking down.

“Are you insinuating that I don’t look pretty every other day?” Anna gave her a smirk and took a sip form her coffee, waiting for a response from the girl.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I'm insinuating, actually.” Elsa quipped “You look like an absolute _hag_ every other day of the week and I can just barely stand to look at you. I was actually going to ask you to start wearing a mask.”

“Oh, I'm sorry that my face is such an inconvenience to you, _your majesty_. You get me a mask and I promise that I’ll start wearing it whenever I'm around you.”

“Good.” The redhead’s face acquired a slight pinkness to it. Elsa scooted up closer to the table and placed her elbows on the circular metallic tabletop. ″But, seriously though, you look really nice.” Elsa found herself brushing her fingers across Anna’s hand. Their fingers were soon interlaced with each other. Anna’s free hand was tapping the keys on her computer at a rapid rate as the blush on her face deepened and she avoided eye contact.  “Now, about leprosy-dick Kristoff—“

“No!” Anna snatched her hand away from Elsa, who looked at her in mock offense. “We are not talking about Kristoff having leprosy on his… boy parts.”

″ _’Boy parts’_ oh my god, okay.″ Elsa covered her face and started laughing again. “Okay, but no, just- just picture it.”

“I am going to find a new partner if you do not quit it.” Anna threatened, trying not to laugh.

″Go ahead, find a new partner, I dare you.″ Elsa retorted.

Anna let out one more laugh before she went back to typing. Elsa watched her nimble hands dance across the keyboard, surely typing something intellectual. She looked up to see that Anna was already nearly done with the research part of the assignment. She checked the time at the corner of the screen to see that they had only been working on it for about half an hour. _So she finishes fast, huh?_

″Done.″ She said and put her hands in her lap. “What do you want to do now?”

“Anything but school work.” Elsa said and stood up from the table, tossing her empty cup in the trash.

* * *

Elsa swung back and forth mindlessly. Anna sat on the swing next to her, watching her as she looked at her kicking feet. She was entranced in the platinum haired girl; she had never met someone so beautiful. Anna almost got angry at herself for liking her and for getting that stupid feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever she looked at her or even just thought about her. Elsa looked up, catching Anna staring at her, and smiled.

″Got something to say, punk?” She said and lightly punched Anna’s arm. She stood up from the swing and walked over to the bench a few feet away. The park was unusually empty. Even Elsa, who was still new to the area, knew that there were usually kids laughing and playing all over the jungle gym equipment with their parents chattering and watching from a distance.

Elsa put her head back and closed her eyes, taking in a breath of warm, crisp autumn air. She heard Anna’s feet crunching fallen leaves underneath her as she walked towards her. A weight setting down on Elsa’s shoulder made her open her eyes to see Anna’s head occupying the space. A small smile crept onto her face as she put an arm around the smaller girl’s shoulder. Even though Elsa only knew Anna for a short period of time, she felt very close to her. Closer to her than she had ever been with Carly or any other girl she’s ever dated or even just been friends with. Granted, Elsa never really had many friends to feel close with. But now there was this red haired girl and, well, Anna was a nice change. Anna made her feel something she’s never felt.

Was it… safety?

Anna reached over and grabbed Elsa’s free hand. She didn’t intertwine their fingers again, but instead just held it in her own, palm up with one of her own hands underneath it and the other on top. Her thumb traced over the lines on Elsa’s palm. They sat there like that for a few more minutes before Anna broke the silence.

 “I like this.” She said, more to herself than to Elsa.

“Like what?” Elsa asked, wanting her to go more in depth.

“This.” She gestured to the two of them. “It’s comfortable and I really like it.” Elsa didn’t know if she was talking about the position they were sitting in or the state of their friendship, but she was happy with it either way. Whatever it was, she had liked it too. Her fingers danced over Anna’s hair, tangling themselves in the loose strands. ″What is this, anyway?″ She asked, adjusting her head a little bit.

″I don’t know…″ Elsa responded after pondering it for a few moments.

″You tried to kiss me twice yesterday.” And there it was. Elsa knew this was going to come up at one point. ″Not that… not that I didn’t want you to or anything. I kind of did want you to. Wow I sound really desperate right now.”

“Well to be fair, the second time was all you. And then there was the third time.″ Elsa waggled her eyebrows at Anna, even though she wasn’t paying any attention; she had her eyes closed. ″The third time was all you too, missy. By the way, that was lameass kiss. Just so you know.” Anna giggled and placed her forehead on the edge of Elsa’s shoulder. “I mean, really? My cheek? Were you aiming for my mouth and just kind of missed, or what?″

″Oh really? Was it that displeasing for you? I’m so deeply sorry.″ _The sarcasm is strong with this one._ She adjusted her head again so that her chin was on the edge of Elsa’s shoulder. They made eye contact and a smile snuck its way onto her face.

“I think I might be able to forgive you. But it’s going to be hard.”

“I don’t know, I think you’ll get over it.″ Anna smiled sheepishly. “Eventually.”

Elsa turned more towards Anna. She took the smaller girl’s face in her hand and tilted it up. Anna closed her eyes as Elsa brushed a thumb over her cheek. Getting lost in the sound of Anna’s breath, she pulled her face closer to her own and—

And then Anna’s phone rang.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Elsa nearly shouted. A flock of birds a few yards away from them took off, shocked at the sudden loudness.

“I’m sorry.” She pulled away from Elsa and reached into her back pocket, grabbing her phone and checking who it was. “Hey mom… Yeah, I’m still with Elsa… No… Yeah… Okay, I’ll ask.” She looked at Elsa and pulled her phone away from her face, partially covering it with her hand. “My mom wants to know if you want to stay for dinner? We’re having spaghetti.”

“Yeah, I’d love to.”

“She said yes… Okay, bye, I love you too.” She hung up and put the phone back in her pocket. Standing up, she announced “My mom said to start coming home if we want to make it in time for dinner.” Checking her phone for the time, Elsa noticed that it was already five. It didn’t seem like they had been out for that long.

* * *

“So what did you girls do today?” Anna’s dad, Aaron, asked the two sitting next to each other. “You were out for quite a while.”

“We were working on a project for school.” Anna informed him.

“Yeah.” Elsa added, twirling some noodles around her fork. _I also almost took your daughter’s virginity on a park bench._

“Did you get it done?”

“Yeah. Almost, we still have to work on the physical part of it the assignment. A poster board that we were _supposed_ to get the supplies for today, but we never did.” Anna gave Elsa an accusing look. ″It’s not due until Wednesday though, so we have plenty of time.″

“Anna and Elsa went on a date!” Olaf announced. Elsa hastily dropped her fork, letting it clatter to the plate, and covered her little brother’s mouth. She looked to her right to see Anna blushing furiously. Anna’s parents exchanged a look and turned away to smile at the two girls. Elsa felt a warm tongue go over her palm and snatched her hand away.

“Ew, Olaf!” She gasped and wiped her hand on the boy’s shirt, laughing. “Let’s refrain from licking people, okay?”

Olaf scooted off of his chair and took his empty plate. “Thank you, Miss Eleanor, it was very yummy. Do you want me to take your plate and put it in the sink?”

“Oh, thank you dear, but I got it.” Anna’s mom said and took the plate from Olaf. She went around the table and grabbed everyone’s plates, getting a “thank you” from each one of them. Elsa thanked her again for inviting them to stay for dinner. Olaf followed Eleanor into the kitchen, offering to help clean dishes.

Anna’s dad looked over at Elsa. “So I hear you and my daughter have taken an interest in each other.”

“Dad, please, I wouldn’t say that.”

 “Anna, let the adults have a conversation.” _Yeah, Anna. Yeesh._ “So, let me ask you something, Miss Elsa- do you have a job to support my daughter?”

“Oh my god.” Anna slapped a hand to her face and sunk down in her chair. “Oh my god.”

“I do, sir. I work at a grocery store. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.” Elsa responded, ignoring the sinking Anna. 

“And are you still in school?” He quirked an eyebrow and gave her a questioning look.

 “Dad, please stop, it’s not like we’re dating or anything, we’re just friends.” The words almost hurt Elsa. Sure, they weren’t dating, but Elsa felt like they were getting somewhere. Unless maybe people who were constantly almost kissing were considered “just friends.” Maybe Elsa was wrong when she thought Anna liked her.

“That’s not what your mom told me earlier.”

Anna stood up and grabbed Elsa by her arm, surprising her, and walked her upstairs and away from her dad. “I’m sorry about him. I swear, he was just joking around. He has a stupid sense of humor.”

Anna led her into her bright orange bedroom, finally letting go of Elsa to close the door. When she turned around, Elsa pinned her against the door. Warm lips pressed against her neck and hands trailed down her sides. Elsa grabbed her wrists and guided them around her own neck, placing her hands back down to Anna’s hips and playing with the fabric of her sundress. Anna let out a little whimper at the feeling of teeth biting down on her collar bone. She threw her head back, letting it bang against the wooden door of her bedroom, hoping it wouldn’t tip her parents off to anything. Elsa’s lips left her neck and, _finally_ , crashed themselves against Anna’s. The kiss barely lasted a few seconds before she pulled away. Anna’s arms hung loosely around Elsa’s neck as the two of them panted and tried to find words to speak.

Elsa finally made eye contact with a flustered Anna. “I’m sorry, I just wanted to do that before we got interrupted again.”


	9. Chapter 9

″It’s just that things are really complicated with Kristoff and everything and I feel like I need to get to know you more before we do anything about this. I just… don’t know what to do. I have feelings for you, I really do, but I just don’t know what to do about them.″

″Go out with me, be my girlfriend, that’s what you do about them.″

″It’s not that simple, I’ve never done this before.″

″Sure it is, just take a chance. I promise I won’t disappoint.″

* * *

_Three months. It’s been three_ fucking  _months and we’re still not actually dating. This casually making out shit is getting old. At least give me something more than just_ kissing _._

Elsa and Anna were lying in Elsa’s bed. Anna had her nose in some book based off The Wizard of Oz and Elsa had her arm draped around the smaller girl’s shoulder, playing with her hair. Through the open door, Olaf could be seen drawing in one of his many coloring books. Stacks of coloring books were strewn around the apartment, all over the couch in the living room and the table in the conjoined dining room/kitchen. The entire apartment was conjoined, actually. The only barriers were the walls closing off the kids’ rooms and the guest bathroom and the island separating the dining room/kitchen and the living room. It was a small apartment, but Elsa and Olaf were grateful for it.

″What’re you thinking ‘bout, Els?″ Anna set her book down on her chest and looked up at the platinum haired girl. Elsa dropped the braided pigtail she had been playing with, meeting the bright blue eyes of the girl in her arms. She didn’t realize that she had been staring into space for so long.

″Nothing…″ _Liar._ ″Just stuff.″

Anna reached up and tapped one of the metal gauges in Elsa’s ear, proceeding to tug on her lobe. ″Tell me what you’re thinking.″ Elsa chuckled, pulling her ear away from the girl and pulled her closer, resting her head on top of hers. She contemplated whether or not to bring up what she had been thinking. She refrained from it when she figured it was probably for the best that they didn’t start a relationship. Not yet, at least. _I know so much about her and she knows next to nothing about me. It’s not fair. I shouldn’t be keeping all this from her. But I've never told anyone before, what if she gets weirded out? No, I should tell her. She_ wants _me to tell her…_

″Elsa?″ Anna pushed away from her, situating herself so that she was facing her. Worry shrouded her eyes. ″What’s wrong? Are you okay?″

″Anna… can I trust you with something?″ _Way to sound dramatic._ Elsa averted her eyes and took a sudden interest in the fabric of her sheets. She felt slender fingers slip under her chin, lifting her head up so that she was at eye-level with the big blue eyes. Anna nodded, looking concerned. ″You said that before we start dating, you wanted to know more about me, and I guess I haven’t really given you that chance, so here it goes…″ She took a deep breath. ″You know how a while ago, I kind of told you that my parents were really abusive?″ She nodded again, the look of concern growing. Elsa’s cheeks burned, feeling a single droplet of water roll down her face. She couldn’t tell what came over her; she threw her arms around Anna’s waist and hid her face in the crook of her neck. All at once, she got flooded with the painful memories of her relationship with her parents. Sobs racked her body. Anna gently put her arms around the girl, confused, and rubbed her back, whispering soothing words into her ear.

When Elsa was calmed down enough, she told Anna everything. She told her about what her dad had done to her however many times and how her parents would disappear for weeks at a time without warning, leaving Elsa to take care of Olaf. She told her about all the bad things her parents would do to her and Olaf while they were under the influence of some drug or another- though she tried to keep Olaf out of the situations as often as she could. She just let everything out. She told Anna about things that she was afraid to admit to herself were even real and actually ever happened. Elsa hated herself for showing weakness but she knew it had to happen.

″You’re going to be okay, you’re not with them anymore. I… I've got you.″ Anna ran a hand through Elsa’s hair. A feeling of guilt washed over her but she couldn’t tell why. ″Elsa, why did you decide to tell me about this right now?″

A sniffling Elsa pulled her face away from the redhead. The pain of her past was visible on her face. ″Sh-should I not have? I'm sorry, it’s ju—‘

″No! Don’t apologize, I’m glad you finally opened up to me; this is such a relief! Well, no, not a _relief_ exactly, but…″ Anna thought over her words carefully. ″I’m just glad you finally let me in.″ She pulled Elsa back closer to her and held her there.

Elsa forced herself to stop crying. She was done, it was over, everything is in her past. She needed to get over it. Pulling away from Anna again, she wiped her eyes. She gave Anna a sheepish look, feeling her small hand rubbing against her back. It was as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders; Elsa never realized how much of a strain keeping her past bottled up was putting on her. Anna was right, it was a relief.

* * *

For the next few days, Elsa felt like Anna was treating her like a ticking time bomb. Though she couldn’t blame her, having Anna hover over her at all times wasn’t always the best thing. Especially not when she could tell that whenever Anna was trying to have a conversation with her, she was obviously choosing her words and her tones carefully. Elsa assured her multiple times that she didn’t have to, but she never listened to her.

Anna went so far as to check up on her during work one day. She claimed it was to do some grocery shopping, but no one goes into a store for ″grocery shopping″ and only buys a pack of gum.

″You need to get a life.″ Elsa joked as she rang up Anna’s single item. ″That’d be one dollar and seventy-five cents.″ Bagging the gum and handing it to Anna, she felt soft fingers dance over her hand at the exchange.

″Oh, what, I don’t get the girlfriend discount?″ She said with a wink.

Elsa flushed at the realization of the term. ″G-girlfriend?″ She tried to hide her face from the smaller girl as a stupid smile tugged at her lips. A lady standing behind Anna in line with a cart full of groceries gave them a small cough, letting them know that she was there and had been waiting. Anna scooted out of line and let Elsa get on with her work, but not before muttering a ″Let’s talk later.″ just loud enough for her to hear.

* * *

Elsa clocked out at around eight o’clock and said her goodbyes to her co-workers. The words Anna had spoken earlier rang around in her head.  _Girlfriend, girlfriend, girlfriend._ Was it that easy? Elsa has dated girls plenty of times before, but she never just waltzed up to them and called them her girlfriend. Not that she was complaining, she was happy that Anna finally got around to it.  _But was it because I told her? I know that that was the circumstance; but was it really_ that  _easy?_

″Hey, Olaf, I’m home!″ She announced upon entrance into her tiny apartment.

″Hush! He’s sleeping!″ Elsa jumped, looking around for the source of the voice. Anna was sitting at the dining room table with a cup of coffee in her hands and a smirk on her face. She brought the cup up to her lips and took a sip, keeping eye contact with Elsa. Elsa took her jacket off and threw it on the couch. She approached the table and took a seat across from the redhead.

″Hey there, creep.″ Elsa hid her hands under the table, wringing them out of what she thought seemed to be nervousness. ″So what did you want to talk about?″ _You’re so stupid, you know what she wants to talk about._

″I finally know what I want to do about the feelings I have for you now.″ Anna sunk down in her chair, a tint of pink covering her freckled cheeks.

″You said things were difficult with Kristoff. I don’t get what you mean by that, how are things difficult?″ Elsa asked, gripping her hands together so tight she thought she might accidentally break the bones there. ″It’s not like you guys are dating. I mean, I know you used to but that was forever ago.″

″Well, first off, two years isn’t exactly _forever ago._ And second, that’s not it.″ Anna took a deep breath. ″He’s been warming up to you over the past few months, but he still doesn’t completely like you. It’s going to be difficult to have my best friend not like my girlfriend, but… can we just forget about Kristoff for right now? I just want to talk abo—‘

A loud banging on the front door interrupted Anna midsentence. Both of the girls’ heads whipped around to look at the door. Warily, Elsa stood up from the table. Olaf’s bedroom door cracked open, revealing the drowsy little boy in his Superman pajamas rubbing his eyes. The banging continued, more furious this time, making both Elsa and her little brother jump. Walking up to the door, Elsa gripped the knob tight in her hand. Olaf came up behind her and held on to one of her legs. Wishing there was a peep hole she could look through, she turned the knob and opened the door slowly. The person on the other side shoved the door open the rest of the way, making the two siblings stumble backwards. Anna darted up from the table to assist the two. In the doorway stood a woman who strangely resembled Elsa, with a few wrinkles here and there. Elsa’s eyes widened at the realization of who was standing in her threshold.   

″Get out!″ She shouted in a voice that Anna had never heard come from her before. ″How did you find us? _Get out!″_

Olaf clambered to his feet and ran for safety behind Anna. She felt the little boy grip the fabric of her jeans, hiding his face in the back of her legs. Reaching behind her, she placed a soothing hand on the boys back and tried to guide him away from the situation. The lady in the doorway pushed passed Elsa and set her sights on Anna and the boy.

″Who the fuck is this!?″ She spat and gripped the girl’s face in her worn hands. Taking a tighter grip, she pushed her face away from her and whipped around to face Elsa again. ″Not important. She probably won’t stay in your life too long anyway. Knowing you, you’ll be ruin _something_.″ Elsa gritted her teeth, obviously fighting back the urge to either cry or beat the lady up.

″GET OUT!″ She yelled one more time, furiously pointing towards the door.

″What? Don’t you care that your father is dead?″ Elsa’s face dropped. ″Yeah, dumb bastard overdosed. You know, it was probably because of the _heartbreak_ brought upon him by the abandonment of his beloved children.″ A whimper and a sniffle came from Olaf. Anna picked the boy up with intentions of bringing him back to his room. Before she even took a step towards the door, the lady snatched Olaf from her, making him whimper again. ″Shut up, boy!″ She hissed, holding him under his arms away from her and shaking him. ″Shut up!″

Anna swooped in and gently took him back. ″Stop that!″ She shouted, holding Olaf in a motherly manner, gripping him close to her body and holding a hand on the back of his head, hiding his face in her neck. Once again, she made her way to the boy’s room and shooed him in there.

″Keep her away from me and my sister, Anna.″ He whined, rubbing tears away from his eyes before darting towards his bed.

″You and Olaf are expected at the funeral.″ The lady spat, shoving a piece of paper at Elsa. ″ _That one_ can come if she wants.″ She looked Anna up and down, giving her a nasty look. Turning around, she stomped out the still open front door and slammed it shut behind her.

″I’m sorry, Anna.″ Elsa muttered, tears flowing from her eyes and down her face as she looked at the crumpled piece of paper in her hands. ″I-I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to explain her…″

″It’s okay, it’s okay.″ Anna approached her carefully, afraid the she would scare her, and draped her arms around the taller girl. She offered calming words as she felt Elsa’s tears drench her


	10. Chapter 10

The grass was green and freshly cut, the sky was blue and clear, and the air was cold. It was such a beautiful day for such a sad event to take place. The pallbearers carried the casket towards the large hole in the ground and set it in some contraption meant to lower it down. Mourners sat in rows, waiting for the service to begin, Elsa, Olaf, and Anna sitting in the front. Anna and Elsa wore similar black dresses, the only difference being that Anna’s had straps and Elsa’s didn’t. Olaf was in a tux that used to belong to a young Kristoff which the boy had so kindly loaned to him. The priest or eulogist or whoever the man was gave a speech about family and love and life and how you should cherish every moment you have while you can. People who barely knew the man in the casket were crying at his passing. Elsa was sure that some of the people sitting in the back row were her parent’s drug dealers and she knew for a fact that the lady in the way back corner was a prostitute that her father had met up with periodically. She closed her eyes tight as tears started to well up. She was crying and she couldn’t understand why. Her father never did anything good for, he only caused her pain.

A soft, calming hand tangled itself in her own, pulling it up to the owner’s lips and placing a soft kiss on it. She blinked the tears away and looked to her left, seeing Anna giving her a weak smile. Returning it, she put her arm around Anna’s shoulders, pulling her closer to her. To her right was a tearing Olaf. She gave his hand a light squeeze and ruffled his platinum hair, trying her best to give him a strong smile. The man by the casket finished giving his speech and asked everyone to stand for prayer. When that was done, the casket containing Elsa’s father was lowered into the ground. People started leaving as soon as dirt started getting thrown into the hole.

Elsa felt eyes burning into the side of her head. Glancing to her right, she saw her mother glaring at her and Anna. If Elsa wasn’t mistaken, she could’ve sworn that for once in the woman’s life, she was actually sober. At least she seemed it. Elsa had never seen her mother look so fragile and broken in her life. It was amazing that someone who cheated on her husband multiple times, leaving him to sexually abuse his daughter, could care so much about his death. She seemed to have lost a lot of weight since Elsa and Olaf left home however many months before. However, that could’ve been due to the fact that Elsa was always the one supplying food and money, for her parents always spent their own on drugs and booze. She almost felt bad for the women, but when she expressed these feelings to Anna, she told her that it was for the best that she and Olaf were separated from their parents. She was right too.

The angry look woman, donned in black pants and a ratty black dress shirt, walked towards the trio, body shaking like a leaf. Whether it was because she was nervous or angry or because she was going through withdrawal symptoms, Elsa will never know.

“I hope you’re happy with yourself.” She spat at Elsa, looking her up and down angrily. “This is all your fault and don’t think for a second that it’s not.”

“I’m failing to see how this is Elsa’s fault.” Anna stepped in, putting herself between the two as to avoid a fight that would have surely taken place. “Things happen. Deaths happen.”

“Anna, stop, you don’t have to do this. Please…” Elsa whispered into her ear, placing a hand on her shoulder, lightly tugging her away from the lady. Fire burned in her mother’s eyes. Anna had seen that look in Elsa before, but only once. It was the day that she had seen the jock, Hans, picking on Anna in the hallway and pushed him to the ground, kicking him in the crotch. If that was the look all the women in Elsa’s family got when they were about to get violent, Elsa knew that Anna wouldn’t want to be anywhere near them. Yet she stood her ground, refusing to let Elsa pull her away.

“Yeah, _Anna_ , stop.” The bitter lady mocked. Anna was about to make a retort when she interrupted her. “Why don’t you leave this family alone while you're at it too? How dare you think you have the right to intrude on family matters such as this. And _you,_ ” she jabbed a finger over Anna’s shoulder, pointing at Elsa. “You ruined everything in this family! You broke your father’s heart when you left! You abandoned us!”

Elsa, in a fit of rage, viciously pulled Anna away from her mother and put her behind her, protecting her from the venom spewing from her mother’s mouth. “You mean exactly like the way you and Father abandoned _us!”_ Elsa shouted back, her face turning red, holding back angry tears. “I swear, the day you can proof to me and Olaf that you were actually being good parents is the day we’ll come back!”

“Me and your father were excellent parents.” She scolded, grabbing Elsa by her shoulder and jabbing a bony finger in her face. “Don’t you ever say that we weren’t you ungrateful piece of shit!”

“You guys were excellent parents? Okay, then explain to me this,” Elsa was near crumpling, she could barely hold herself up. She looked around to make sure that the majority of the crowd from the funeral had dispersed. Only two or three people were still lingering behind, watching dirt being shoveled into the hole after the casket. “I was _raped,_ Mother, by my oh so excellent dad while you were out _blowing_ your dealer!” Vicious sobs caused her body to shudder violently. “Where were you when that happened? What did that man have that your own family didn’t? Don’t you dare tell me that you were excellent parents. Me an Olaf have put up with your shit for _years._ We don’t need you. We never did.”

Her mother stared at her wide-eyed with her mouth hanging open, looking for words to throw back at her daughter. Elsa was ready to blow up at the woman even more when she felt a tug on the hem of her dress. She looked down to see Olaf giving her large puppy eyes. “Elsa, can we go home? I don’t want to see mommy anymore.”

″You have brainwashed this child.″ Their mother said angrily, dismissing what her daughter had previously told her.

“Come on, Els.” Anna’s arm weaved around Elsa’s waist, more to support her and make sure she didn’t fall in on herself than anything else. She took Olaf by the hand and led them out of the cemetery and to the parking lot where Elsa’s car was. The siblings’ mother could be heard yelling obscenities at them as they walked away. Elsa felt like she was going to vomit from all the frustration she was feeling. By the time they arrived at her car, she tried to pull herself together the best she could. Tears still streamed from her eyes, but not as badly as they had been before. Small hiccups escaped her every now and then.

Before opening the door to let Anna in the car, she whispered a watery thank you. Anna took the keys from her hand and offered to drive, seeing that Elsa was in no shape to drive.

* * *

That night, with Olaf tucked away in bed, Elsa and Anna sat on the couch of the tiny apartment in silence. Anna had called her parents when they had gotten back and told them that she would be spending the night there. Anna had her arm around the taller girl’s shoulders, holding her close and running her fingers through the beautiful, platinum hair. Tears rolled down Elsa’s face, which Anna promptly brushed away with her thumb. She periodically placed gentle kisses on the top of her head, taking in her scent whenever she did. Elsa had her arms wrapped around Anna’s waist, holding onto her as if she was drowning and she was a buoy. She listened to the smaller girl’s heartbeat, finding it incredibly soothing.

“Thanks for coming today.” Elsa whispered into the redhead’s chest. “I don’t think I would have gone if you hadn’t come with me. And…I’m sorry about my mom. Again.”

“Don’t apologize. Your mom’s a complete bitch. I was about two seconds away from beating the crap out of her.” Elsa let herself smile for a moment. She would never get used to the way Anna sounded when she swore. It was silly, but she liked it.

“I know. Anna, I’m just…” She didn’t know how she wanted to word what she was about to say. “I-I’m afraid that I’m going to end up like her one day…” She finally let out. It was a thought that Elsa had been struggling with ever since her mother started doing drugs. Before Olaf was born and all of these bad things started happening, people had always told Elsa that she was so much like her mother when she was younger. She looked like her and acted like her and had the same hobbies as her. Elsa was afraid that it was some sort of pattern that she would soon fall into and never be able to pull herself out of. She didn’t want that and she promised herself she wouldn’t let it happen, but she was terrified that it would.

Anna looked down at the girl in her arms in shock. “Elsa, don’t say that, don’t even worry about that, you are absolutely nothing like your mom. I promise.” She felt Elsa’s body shaking slightly when she didn’t give Anna a response. “You’re amazing, please believe me when I say that. People may not think it just by looking at you, but you are the sweetest, most caring person I know.” Still no response. “Come on, please don’t shut me out right now, it’s not going to help anything″ Still no response. Anna brushed the hair out of Elsa’s face, trying to catch her gaze. ″Elsa?”

Elsa looked up at Anna teary eyed. It was a quick, simple peck on the lips, but it got her message across. Elsa had appreciated what Anna said.


	11. Chapter 11

_Stop, you’re being so stupid. You’ve always been_ so _stupid!_

_Snap out of it._

_He’s not here to hurt you anymore, please just snap out of this. Just get over it. There’s nothing to worry about anymore._

_Think about your brother for fuck’s sake. He needs you too. Think about Anna. You need her. There are people that love you now and they always will love you. Even that goof, Kristoff. He would probably miss you if you were gone. You need to just get yourself together._

″Stop!″

_Just breathe. In. Out. In . Out. You can do this._

_I can’t do this, I just can’t do this. I can’t take it anymore._

Please _someone help me, I’m suffocating, I feel like I'm drowning. I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. Please, someone just help me get out of this misery. Please. Please._

″Please…″

* * *

″I don’t know what to do, Kristoff.″ Anna huffed, throwing her phone down on her bed after an attempt to contact her girlfriend for the umpteenth time. ″I haven’t heard from her in days. She’s ignoring my calls and texts and every time I stop by her apartment, she’s not home. I went to her work and they say that she’s been there, but no one knows where she goes afterwards. Sometimes Olaf is at their apartment, be it by himself or with a babysitter, but he won’t tell me where she is. Apparently it’s some huge secret that Anna’s not allowed to know.″

The burly blonde boy slung an arm around his best friend’s shoulder, offering a smile and giving her a tight squeeze. The redhead whimpered softly, rubbing tears from her eyes. ″I’m sure there’s a reason for it, Anna. It’s a shame she had to run off like this, though, I was just starting to like her.″ Jokingly, he added ″I hope she’s not gone forever.″

″You’re not helping anything, Kristoff.″ She mumbled and pushed him away.

A few days after the funeral, Elsa had gone off the grid. The only person who knew where she was was Olaf, and he said he swore to Elsa that he wouldn’t tell anyone, especially not Anna. When it had been nearly a week, Anna told Kristoff that she was going to call the police and file a missing persons report. With much persuading, Kristoff had convinced Anna not to do it, saying that it would only piss Elsa off. And he was right, but Anna knew she had to do something. Olaf wasn’t going to help her at all, so it was going to be difficult. She spent hours upon hours walking around town, trying to find out where Elsa had gone off to. One day, she even had Kristoff drive her to the town Elsa had lived in before she Olaf had moved, but she was still nowhere to be found. No matter how long she looked, it was no use. It was as if Elsa had just vanished into thin air.

Anna had never thought to look in the cemetery.

* * *

Two weeks had gone by. Anna talked to her parents and eventually decided to take Olaf in, for they didn’t know whether Elsa had ever come by to check up on the boy or not. Olaf never spoke about it. Apparently, he had sworn an oath of secrecy. The boy was doing well, though, he was healthy, the babysitter Elsa had hired to periodically check on him and take care of him had been doing a good job of making sure he got all of his nutrients and everything.

Day after day, Anna would ask Olaf about Elsa. She even went so far as to bribe him with candies and cakes and every sweet thing he desired. When the first snow of winter had fallen, she and Olaf would constantly be outside, making snowmen. Anna figured that that would be the best time to ask him about his sister, when he was at his happiest.

″Elsa always makes the best snowmen.″ He would say with each new snowman that they had built. ″I bet she’s making one right now.″

″Where is she making one, Olaf?″ Anna questioned, eyeing the boy as she made a snowy abdomen. She lifted it up and placed it on top of the bottom, making sure it was safe and secure. There was no answer from the little boy. Anna went up and kneeled in front of him, placing a hand on each shoulder and giving him a stern look. ″Olaf, please, you need to tell me where your sister is. I need to know that she’s okay. I know you probably think that Elsa is invincible and can tough through everything, and I wish I could believe that too, but she’s not. She a very strong girl, yeah, but she needs her friends and family right now. Please tell me where she is, Olaf, I’m begging you.″

″No! I promised I wouldn’t tell!″ He shouted into her face.

Anna retreated into her house with tears threatening to run down her face, but she held them back until she was in the safety of her room.

* * *

_Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know. Don’t let them know. Don’t let anyone know. Come on, Elsa, you have this under control; don’t let your emotions get the best of you._

“But I can’t.”

_Just try. It’s not that hard, you’re just being a pain in the ass. You can do this, you know you can. You just have to dig deep, that’s all._

_“_ I don’t know how!”

_I need help. Why is everyone looking at me? Why are they all looking at me? Please stop. Please stop. Please just help me._

* * *

″Mom, can you please try talking to Olaf again, he’s not listening to me. Please, just  _one more time._ ″ Anna pleaded, sitting on the counter that her mom had told her a billion times before not to sit on. She let it slide this time, though.

The two women were in the kitchen making dinner. It had been another stressful day of not knowing where Elsa had run off to. Anna had given up on trying to contact her by phone, she knew that it was no use at all. She had given up on the late night drives with Kristoff around town, hoping to see a shock of platinum blonde hair out of the corner of her eye. She had given up on nearly everything. The only thing she was still holding onto was the hope that Olaf would eventually talk and tell them where his sister had been all this time. But even with that, she was ready to give up.

“Anna, I've tried talking to him, you’ve tried talking to him, and your father has tried talking to him. No one has gotten through to the boy yet. The only person who hasn’t talked to him yet is Kristoff. You can ask him to try, but lord knows it’s not going to happen.”

Anna hid her face in her hands, forcing herself not to cry again. For the past two weeks, it seemed like that was all she had been doing. “Kristoff! That’s it! I should get Kristoff to talk to him!”

* * *

_Am I dying? Is this what death feels like?_

_It’s probably for the best. They’re all better off without you. They were always better off without you. You ruined everything; you practically killed your own goddamn father. Your mother was right about you. All the times she has told you that you were worthless, she was right. How can you possibly live with yourself, you filthy piece of shit?_

_They were always better off without you. They all deserve so much better than you._

_Especially Anna._

* * *

“Elsa never really told me where she was going…” Olaf finally admitted. Kristoff was sitting with him on the floor, putting together a puzzle of a lighthouse. It had amazed Anna how well he interacted with the boy. “She only kind of hinted at it. She said… she said that she was going someplace to think. She said that she loved me and that she would be back as soon as she could.″ He let out a sigh as he put a piece in its proper place. “She said she was going to tell someone where she was, but they couldn’t tell anyone unless things got really bad.”

“Olaf, do you know who she told?” The boy shook his head no. He put a piece of the puzzle into Kristoff’s hand for him to figure out where it went.

A silence fell over the room. The three of them looked at each other. Anna wondered who it could possibly have been that Elsa had told. So many thought were rushing through her head at once, it was giving her a headache. Why would Elsa have not told her? Was it because she thought Anna would judge her and not want to be with her anymore? Why not her brother? Maybe because he would look at her the way they do their mother. It definitely was not Anna’s mom or dad that Elsa had told, they would have informed her and they would have tried to stop Elsa. There was no way she would have told her own mother, she would never have given a shit.

 “Anna…” Kristoff spoke, looking up at the redhead from his position on the floor. A look of guilt washed over him and suddenly it all clicked in Anna’s head. “I have something I kind of need to tell you…”

* * *

_Anna…_


	12. Chapter 12

_“Kristoff, I need to trust you with something.” Elsa’s voice rang out over the phone. Kristoff could hear a crack in her voice as she spoke. “I need you to promise me that you won’t tell Anna this, okay?”_

_“Elsa,” Kristoff scoffed, already getting annoyed with the girl. “Anna is my best friend and I, unlike you, can’t keep secrets from her. So whatever it is you want to tell me, just don’t even bo—“_

_“Please, I’m begging you…” Another crack. Weakness started to shine through. “I just need someone to know this, just in case something happens. I know you don’t like me, but can I please just trust you to not tell Anna what I'm about to tell you unless things get seriously bad. Please?”_

_Kristoff wiped his face with his hand and groaned into the phone. He gave in. “Fine, fine! What is it that could possibly be_ so _important that you don’t want your own_ girlfriend _to know? Please tell me, I’m just dying of curiosity?”_

_Elsa let out a long sigh. Sniffling could be heard from on the other end of the line. “I’m going to be going away for a while. I don’t know how long, I just need to go away to… to think.” There was a short pause coming from Kristoff’s end of the line._

_“Don’t be stupid, Elsa.” He spat. “You can’t just leave. What about your brother?”_

_“I already have things worked out with him. And don’t worry; it won’t be for too long. At least I don’t think. I’m not really sure yet.”_

_“Well, fine then. Do you what you want, I don’t really care that much. But just know that you’re going to be hurting people if you just up and leave like this.” His words were shrouded in venom._

_“You don’t think I know that?” More sniffling. “Please, just trust me, this is for the best right now.”_

_“Are you sure?” There was no answer, just struggled breathing. “Okay, fine… where are you going?”_

* * *

_You deserve this, you piece of shit. You’ve_ always  _deserved this and you know it._

Elsa leaned against the headstone of her father’s grave. Blankets that some strangers who had seen her there had given her were loosely draped around her shoulders. She didn’t have the energy to hold them tight around her anymore.

_Those people probably only gave you those blankets because they don’t want other people to see you sitting around here, bawling your pathetic eyes out._

At first, the visits to her father’s grave were only interrupted for her to go to work, but that eventually stopped after the first week. She figured that when it got cold enough, she would get up and leave, probably go home to Olaf and hope that he didn’t hate her. However, when the temperature started to drop to below freezing, she was still sitting there. She had frequent episodes of violent shaking, only making the blankets fall off of her even more. As if it were possible, she had gotten paler over the past two weeks. Her thoughts started getting jumbled and nothing seemed sensible anymore. For a while, she thought she had seen Anna and Kristoff throwing frisbees around in the snow with that dog, Sven.

_Do you see that, Els? That’s them being happy without you. It could be like that for them all the time if you just stopped breathing. You got in between their friendship. You ruined things for them. They were probably about to get back together before you came around._

_You ruined everything._

_Just stop breathing and things can get better._

Elsa hadn’t eaten in days and it showed. Ribs and hipbones stuck out grossly with the skin tightly wrapped over them. After a few days, the rumbling in her stomach had stopped, leaving only a sharp, reoccurring pain in her abdomen. She was weak and felt like she couldn’t stand up to go home even if she wanted to. There were voices in her head that were constantly telling her that she deserved this. At first, they were dark grumbling voices, then it was her mother, then her father (at this point, she was convinced that he was haunting her), and now the voices in her head sounded a lot like her own voice. It was only when she held her fingers up to her mouth to breathe on them and felt her lips forming words did she realize it.

She had been yelling what she thought was the voices in her head speaking. Soon, she found herself yelling back at them (herself), causing people visiting their loved one’s graves to stare at her.

But then the voices started to sound a lot like Anna and Kristoff.

″Elsa!” A sweet voice called. The soft crunching of snow could be heard in the distance. “ _Elsa!”_ Looking up, Elsa saw the redhead running towards her. _It has to be another hallucination._ Anna dropped to her knees in front of the pale girl, gripping her by her shoulders, proving Elsa wrong. The blankets that had been wrapped around her were now lying on the snowy ground. Kristoff ran up behind Anna, spewing apologies.

“I’m sorry Anna, I knew I should have told you earlier, I’m so sorry!”

Anna swung her body around and punched Kristoff in the leg unforgivingly. Taking off her beanie and scarf, she put them both on Elsa, trying her best to keep her warm. A sudden shivering episode made Anna jump back, fearing that she had hurt the girl. It subsided quickly. Anna instructed Kristoff to pick Elsa up to bring her to the car.

Anna sat with Elsa in the back seat, doing her best to keep her warm along with the heater. Kristoff drove to the hospital as fast as he could without getting a ticket.

“Hey, Anna…” Elsa grumbled, looking up at the girl holding her. Anna urged her to go on, but Elsa passed out before she could say anything.

_And this is the part where your breathing finally stops._

Anna reached down to feel Elsa’s pulse on her wrist. The only thing she could feel was heavily spaced out thumps of a pulse. The distance between each one was so long that Anna could have sworn that they were non-existent. That the beating she felt was just Kristoff driving over a bump in the road or maybe they were just a figment of her hopeful imagination.

“Please drive faster, Kristoff!”

* * *

_What is this? Where am I? What is that smell? Someone’s been using too much hand sanitizer. Wait, wait… what is that noise? Who the hell is crying?_

Elsa looked around, her eyes adjusting to the fluorescent lighting of the room. A heated blanket lay on top of her. Whether she was shivering from being cold or from trauma, she couldn’t tell. The sobs coming from somewhere to her right continued, getting slightly annoying. Elsa was about to tell whoever it was to shut the fuck up when she turned her head to see a weeping Anna. She tried getting out of whatever bed she was in to comfort the redhead, but she couldn’t find the strength to lift herself up. Letting out a loud grunt, she unintentionally got Anna’s attention. Chair legs skidded across the floor with the force of Anna shooting up and making her way to the bedside.

″Elsa!” She gasped and grabbed the girl’s hand, squeezing it tight. Elsa’s breath was heavy and strained. It was as if she was just learning how to make her lungs function correctly. “Elsa, oh my god! Are you okay?” The platinum haired girl nodded her head, gritting her teeth in pain as she finally noticed her splitting headache. Anna covered her mouth with a soft hand; Elsa noticed her body shaking lightly. “Why… why did you run off, Elsa?” Her words got caught in her throat.

“Anna… I… I don’t know.” Elsa confessed, looking at the sobbing girl in front of her. “I’m sorry.”

“No!” Anna shouted, throwing her arm down in a swiping motion. “You could have died, Elsa! You almost _did!_ ” Another bout of tears flowed down the girls face. Elsa wondered how much Anna had been crying over the past two weeks because of her. “They thought you were dead… the doctors thought you were dead.”

Elsa looked at the girl in shock. She had been so out of it for the past few days, everything had been a haze. She didn’t even remember Anna or anyone else finding her, let alone bringing her to a hospital. Tears started to sting in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Anna.″ She whispered.

″Were you even thinking when you left!?″ Anna’s voice got louder and louder. She swung her hands around in exaggerated gestures. “Did you think about Olaf? What would have happened to him without you in his life? What about me, did you think about me? _At all?_ ” Elsa eyes got wide at the realization of what she had done. She started hyperventilating. She threw the blanket off of her body and tried getting out of the bed. Spewing apologies, Anna tried to push Elsa back down under the blankets, telling her she needed to stay in the bed. Still struggling with her breathing, Elsa shoved passed the redhead. She stumbled to the cold ceramic tiled floor, not being able to support her own weight. Freckled arms wrapped around her waist and lifted her up. Anna took one of Elsa’s arms, draped it around her neck, and guided her back to the hospital bed. Elsa refused to lay back down so she sat on the edge of the bed with Anna sitting next to her.

″I’m sorry, I’m sorry.″ She whispered into the Elsa’s ear, rubbing her back in soothing circular motions. Just then, the large blonde boy walked into the room with Olaf. A squeal emitted from the little boy. He jumped onto the bed and wrapped his tiny arms around his big sister’s neck. Elsa suppressed a groan of pain for him.

“Elsa! Elsa! Elsa!” Olaf cheered, squeezing her tighter. “I missed you, Elsa.”

The tears that had been brimming her eyes finally spilled over. She threw her arms around the boy, gripping him tight with no intentions of letting go. She kissed the top of his head. Muffled apologies were lost in the platinum hair.

* * *

Elsa lay sound asleep in Anna’s bed only to be awoken by a light knock on the door. Anna’s parents had insisted that her and Olaf stay with them until she was healthy enough to be on her own again. That was the excuse, but they all knew that it was actually because everyone was afraid that Elsa might try and run off again, even though she swore that she wouldn’t.

 “Hey, Elsa…” Elsa got out from under the covers to look at the source of the knock. Kristoff stood in the doorway, giving her a sheepish smile upon eye contact. He took a few steps into the room cautiously as if to test and make sure the waters were safe. “Hey, can we talk?”

“Please, Kristoff,” Elsa said, sitting up and rubbing her temples. “I’ve already gotten lectured by Anna and _both_ of her parents. Can we please just not talk about anything right now? I fucked up, I know, and I regret it beyond belief…” She let out a sigh. “Please, I just want to forget about it.”

“No, actually, I didn’t want to talk about that.” He made his way to the bed and sat down on the edge. “I just wanted to apologize… for being such a dick to you and all. There was no reason for me to act that way towards you and I’m sorry. Since I met you, I've been a jerk to you and that’s not fair.”

“Don’t be sorry, I understand.” Kristoff quirked an eyebrow. Offering a small smile, Elsa nudged him with her foot. “Hey, where’s Anna by the way?”

“Doing some grocery shopping with her parents and Olaf. They’ll be back in a little bit.″

She hid her face in her hands with shame. ″Which is why they sent you here to keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t bolt again, right?” Platinum locks cascading over her fingers were tucked behind her ear by a meaty hand. The hand that had been fixing her hair cupped her cheek, brushing a thumb back and forth. “I’m such a fuckup, Kristoff, I can’t believe I did that!” She threw her hands down, assaulting the mattress. Her face started to turn red with anger towards herself.

″Hey, hey, hey,″ Kristoff grabbed her hands and held them both clasped between his own. ″Nobody is mad at you, Els, everyone was just worried. You shouldn’t be mad either.″ He momentarily released his grasp on her hands to lift her head up and make eye contact with her. ″You made a rash decision in a bad state of mind, it’s okay. You’re okay.″

″I abandoned Olaf. That’s not okay.″ Elsa insisted. ″I’m a horrible sister. I'm a horrible _person_.″

″No you’re not! Believe it or not, Olaf understands why you left.″ He squeezed her hands a little bit tighter. ″And I know you have Anna in the back of your mind somewhere, and don’t worry about it. Like I said, no one was mad at you, especially not Anna. She was just a nervous wreck, but she’s better now.″

Elsa clenched her eyes shut. Her breathing started to come out heavy and struggled. Upon noticing this, Kristoff brought the girl into a tight embrace, not letting her go until her breathing got back to normal. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hid her face in his chest, trying to breathe in and out as steadily as she could.

“Hey, come on.” Kristoff rubbed his hand over her back. “Come on, everything’s okay. I promise.” Elsa pushed away from him, avoiding eye contact.

“Thank you, Kristoff.” She mumbled and leaned against the headboard of the bed, letting out a deep sigh.

* * *

″Hey, Els, you still asleep?” Anna’s voice rang from the other side of the door, followed by a knocking pattern that the girl had been prone to doing. Elsa was sitting cross-legged on the bed with Anna’s freshman year yearbook on her lap, looking at the awkward girl’s photo. She slid the book underneath the bed before letting Anna know that she was up.

When Elsa stated a response, the door creaked open. Anna walked in, holding something in her hands. “Here.” She said and tossed a pack of gum at her. Picking it up, Elsa felt a smile tug at her lips at realizing that it was the same type of gum that Anna had bought the day in the store when she announced that she was her girlfriend. Shakily, she pulled herself out of the bed and went over to Anna, wrapping her arms around the shorter girl’s neck and holding her tight.

“Thanks, Anna.” She whispered and placed a kiss on top of her head. “For everything.”

Anna’s arms tangled themselves around Elsa’s waist. An “I love you” was pressed against the crook of the girl’s neck, followed by light kisses that trailed up her neck and the side of her face until they met soft lips.


	13. Epilogue

It took several years and countless hours of therapy, but Elsa was finally at a point in her life when she was content with everything in it. She had gone to college to become a writer and was doing successfully in the children’s’ books market. She was eventually able to afford a nicer apartment for her and Olaf to live in, which Anna had also moved into after a while.

 “You're making kind of a mess, Els.″ Kristoff announced from the couch as he watched the platinum haired woman turn over absolutely everything in the room. She pulled away from looking underneath the couch to glare at him.

″You know, it’d help if you weren’t just sitting there and actually helped me look for it!″ Elsa spat. She got to her feet and went to look into her room for the millionth time that day. She had an hour before Anna was going to get home and she had been looking for the god forsaken thing for nearly two. ″I just don’t understand what I could have done with it!″ She grumbled and looked under the bed. The smell of Anna’s perfume still lingered in the air from when she had gotten ready for work that morning.

Elsa had begged her to skip work that day and stay home and sit in bed with her, but Anna insisted that she had to go.

 _″_ Somebody _has to teach the youth of today and it sure as hell isn’t going to be a substitute.″_ Anna had argued that morning. ″ _Besides, there’s no one more qualified to teach biology than the person who was able to help_ you _learn it.″_

Elsa smiled at the thought as she pulled everything out of her closet. Shoeboxes fell on her and clothes nearly smothered her and she _still_ couldn’t find it.

The front door creaked open. ″Kristoff, you better not be leaving right now, I still haven’t found the fucking ri—″

Someone coughed from behind Elsa. She whirled around to see Anna standing in the doorway to their bedroom, tilting her head to the side and quirking an eyebrow at the woman.

″H-hey, Anna, hi!″ Elsa stammered, kicking some of the clothes that had been on the floor into the closet. ″You're home… early. You're home very early. Why are you home early?″

″Yeah, my parent/teacher meeting got canceled…″ Anna looked around at the mess. A frantic looking Kristoff ran up behind her.

″I tried to stop her, Els, I swear.″ He said, earning himself another glare from Elsa.

″Wait, I’m sorry, what happened here?″ The redhead looked back and forth between the two of them. ″Whatever antics you two got yourselves into today, I’m not in charge of cleaning up after it. I’m just letting you know that right now.” She turned back to her girlfriend. ″And Elsa, if you adopted another dog without telling me, it’s going back.”

Elsa ran her hands through her hair and tugged at it in frustration. She let out a loud sigh, looking around at the mess she had made trying to look for the stupid little box. _Way to go, Elsa, you’ve wrecked the entire apartment because you couldn’t keep your shit together._ ″Can I just say that the dog thing was _one_ time and it was a spur of the moment type of thing and you loved that dog.″

″If I loved it so much, why did I make Kristoff take it?″ Anna crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. ″Which is going to happen to you if you don’t start explaining what happened here today.″

“We—“

Kristoff let out a loud ″Oh!″ and pushed passed Anna. He rushed to the side of the bed that Elsa typically slept on and reached under it, receiving a small, black box. ″Found it!″ He shouted and threw it to Elsa. She let out a long sigh of relief and thanked the man. The huge ball of stress that had been forming inside her finally dissipated. The woman in front of her still looked confused and somewhat angry, though.

″The apartment is wrecked because you couldn’t find some stupid box!″ Anna shouted, not showing and real signs of rage but still somehow managed to look pissed.

″Well you see, the thing is, this isn’t just some stupid box.″ Elsa replied coyly. Kristoff found this as the perfect time to leave the two alone, shutting the door behind him. She took small steps towards Anna, a small smile forming on her face. ″I was going to try and be really romantic about all of this because I know you like that shit, but then I lost it. I lost this stupid box.″ She held it up and gave it a shake. Anna’s eyes widened as Elsa closed the large space between them, now only leaving a few inches between their bodies.

″Elsa, wha—″

Elsa put a hand up for the woman to stop talking, and then placed it around her back, pulling her closer. ″We have spent the past, what, like eight years? Yeah, eight years together. And in that time, you have helped me become such a better person. You’ve helped me open up about things that I was afraid to even think about and you’ve helped me realize that some things in my life just aren’t my fault.” She stepped away from the woman and got down on one knee, clutching the box tight in her hand. Anna covered her mouth in shock, letting out a barely audible gasp. ″You’ve put up with my late night panic attacks and you’ve put up with the irrational decisions that I make sometimes and, more importantly, you’ve put up with me _losing_ things.″

Elsa switched from her kneeling position to sitting cross-legged on the floor. She took Anna’s hand and tugged her down so that she was sitting in the same position that she was in.

″Elsa, I don’t think this is how it works…” Anna said, her words catching in her throat and her eyes starting to water.

“Shut up, I don’t really care.” She extended her hand with the box in it and flicked it open. “Anna… I’m sick of being _just_ your girlfriend… will you marry me?”

Anna lunged forward, wrapping her arms around Elsa’s neck and pushing her back so that they were lying flat on the ground. Warm lips made contact with the taller woman’s cheek repeatedly.

“So, um, is that a yes or what?” Elsa asked, momentarily pushing the redhead away from her.

“ _Yes!”_

Kristoff could be heard cheering outside the bedroom door.


End file.
